Copyright by Sarah Ellen Vartabedian 2012
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Copyright by Sarah Ellen Vartabedian 2012 THE DISSERTATION COMMITTEE FOR SARAH ELLEN VARTABEDIAN CERTIFIES THAT THIS IS THE APPROVED VERSION OF THE FOLLOWING DISSERTATION: WORKING THROUGH A MONUMENTAL BREAK UP: IDEOLOGICAL TRANSITIONS, IRONIC MONUMENTAL DISRUPTIONS, AND PUBLIC DELIBERATION Committee: Dana Cloud, Supervisor Carole Blair Paul Bolin Barry Brummett Sharon Jarvis Working through a Monumental Break Up: Ideological Transitions, Ironic Monumental Disruptions and Public Deliberation by SARAH ELLEN VARTABEDIAN, B.A.; M.A. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN DECEMBER, 2012 Acknowledgements So many people contributed to this dissertation in significant ways. I will not do them justice in the next few pages, but please know that I will forever be grateful to you all. First, I want to thank my advisor Dana Cloud. Her feedback and encouragement throughout this process made me a better writer and scholar and I will always be in awe of her editing skills. Thank you for always finding the kindest way to say “your passive voice is slowly killing me.” Thank you for being such a wonderful role model and showing me what it means to be committed to a cause. Next, I want to thank Carole Blair for her mentorship over the last seven years. Carole and her partner Bill Balthrop are the reason I pursued a Ph.D. Thank you both for holding my hand every step of the way. Thank you for attending all of my conference panels, sending me notes of encouragement, and always being there when I needed a pep talk. I will be a better teacher and mentor because of you. A special thanks to Carole for agreeing to be on my committee and for contributing so much to my growth as a scholar and a person. Next, I would like to thank Barry Brummett for forcing me to embrace the methodology section. I know it needs to be there. I do not know why I fought it for so long. Also, thank you to Paul Bolin for being such a supportive teacher and committee member throughout the process. I am so grateful I took your class as soon as I got to Texas. Finally, thank you Sharon Jarvis. You are a saint. You make such insightful contributions and always found caring ways to convey your concerns. Thank you for your time, comments, and commitment to your students. Susan Corbin, thank you for helping me out with schedules, paperwork, and everything else imaginable. I am indebted to you all. Thank you. Thank you. I also want to thank everyone at UT who made the experience so memorable and (relatively) painless. When living in the Hopper got depressing, I could always count on my iv wonderful friends and colleagues to boost my spirits. First, Kristin Stimpson, where do I begin? You really are my scholar soul mate. I cannot imagine what graduate school would have been like without you. Thank you for the encouragement, the love, and the occasional tough love. Your outlook on life inspires me. Next, Kayla Rhidenour, you are the most patient and kind roommate a girl could ask for. Thank you for never judging me when I sat in the same spot typing for days at a time. I look forward to all of our future travels. Matt Morris, thank you for being my constant friend for the past four years. I loved our lunch breaks and dance breaks. You are a true friend. MaryAnne Taylor, thank you for the real talk and the love of NCAA basketball. I could always count on you for a reality check. Lastly, Maegan Stephens, you are the id I wish I could be. Thank you for making all of our lives livelier. I also want to thank Andrew Ishak for the pick-up games and Gamze Yilmaz for putting up with me as a roommate. If nothing else, we can always open up a Middle Eastern restaurant in Austin. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my wonderful family. Rob, Audrey, and Bobby, thank you for all of the Skype sessions, cards, and support. You have always been there for me. I love you. To all of my grandparents, thank you for supporting me and loving me. Granny, thank you for telling me to get my Ph.D. Grandma, thank you for always being interested in my progress. Thank you to the Hesters and Vickers for all of their support. I am so lucky to have you. I also want to thank the Dawes-Klinger family for encouragement, interest, and Grand Canyon hikes. Lastly, I want to thank my Mom and Dad. Even though I frequently felt that my Dad had misinformed me when insisting that writing a dissertation was a ‘labor of love,’ I could not have asked for more loving, understanding, and supportive parents. Any success I have is because of you. I hope you know how much I love and appreciate everything about you. Mom, thank you for writing all of those stupid page numbers. You are amazing. v One final thanks needs to go to my cats, Mother Jones and Houdini. Kidding, only kidding. To my partner, Conrad Hester, your love carried me through the last few years of this process. Your encouragement always came at the right time and your proofreading is the only reason I passed. You supported me intellectually, emotionally, and with an endless supply of Hot Tamales. Thank you. I am so glad you asked me to define “trauma” the first time we met. I can now tell you it means marrying someone while they are writing a dissertation. You are my great love. Thank you. vi ABSTRACT Working through a Monumental Break Up: Ideological Transitions, Ironic Monumental Disruptions, and Public Deliberation Publication No.___________________ Sarah Ellen Vartabedian, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Dana Cloud At present the literature of counter-monument studies does not account for the complex interactions of irony and nostalgia in memorial spaces. The three case studies examined in this project show that nostalgia can produce critically engaging spaces of deliberation depending on how ironic commemoration intervenes in comic or tragic frames. In order to show that more rhetorical focus is possible, I have challenged the conceptualization of counter-monument studies through what I have termed the “ironic monumental disruption.” Monument studies must address how the idea of the counter-monument, in which the "counter" supposedly resides in the artifact itself, valorizes monolithic critiques and fails to recognize that contexts, interactions, and artifacts all shape the symbolism of the commemorative site. Alternatively, ironic monumental disruptions offer critical and deliberative opportunities in their interactions with visitors and provide more conceptual insight into transitional commemorative practices. The monuments reviewed in this project initially appeared to provide additional reinforcement for escapist, capitalist narratives, but my examination of them has revealed that allowing for (ironic) vii commemorative contradictions provides discursive openings for publics unknowingly silenced by a lack of public deliberation. Commemorative irony produces valuable insights into the current historical moment and the representational issues created by ideological transitions. The citizens of Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Hungary express varying levels of nostalgia about their communist past, which is why the commemorative sites within these countries create a valuable spectrum of ironic and nostalgic entanglements. Commemorative irony produces valuable insights into the current historical moment and the representational issues created by ideological transitions. viii Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Irony and Nostalgia in an Ambivalent Age: Arguing for the Concept of Ironic Monumental Disruption ...........................................................................................3 The Cast of Characters, Commemorative Questions, and Definitional Clarifications ........5 Post-Communist Commemoration and Kung-Fu: Situating the Case Studies ..................10 Bulgaria ..................................................................................................................12 Yugoslavia .............................................................................................................13 Hungary..................................................................................................................16 An Overview of the Chapters ............................................................................................20 The Political Promise of Ironic Monumental Disruptions .................................................24 Chapter One: Public Monuments to Political Transitions: Rhetorical Foundations ......................27 The Emergence of “Public Memory ..................................................................................29 The Materialization of Public Memory and Identity: Memory Places, Nostalgia, and Comic and Tragic Framing ....................................................................................31 Monuments as Ideological Microcosms ............................................................................36 Confrontations with Monuments and Memory Places.......................................................40 Finding Space for Irony, Nostalgia, and Confrontation in the Monumentality Literature ................................................................................................................43