RT Unpublished Material
T1 It was never just about the statue: ethos of historical figures in public debates on contested cultural objects
A1 Pereira Fariña, Martín
A1 Koszowy, Marcin
A1 Budzynska, Katarzyna
K1 Argumentation
K1 Discursive strategies
K1 Cultural heritage
K1 Collective and historical memory
K1 Ethos associated with contested cultural objects
K1 Ethos of historical figures
K1 Discourse analysis
AB Collective, historical memory becomes increasingly important in public debates on cultural heritage across many countries. Their key elements are contested cultural objects—such as statues or memorials—which construct nations' memory that governs societal processes such as decolonisation or de-Stalinization. This paper analyses arguments about five such objects in UK, US, South Africa, Poland and Spain in order to identify discursive strategies used to argue whether to remove or to keep them. Large-scale comparative discourse analysis reveals that the ethos of historical figures—such as the Confederates or Joseph Stalin—commemorated by these cultural objects plays an essential and primary role in these debates. We argue that values associated with the character of these figures determine the dynamics of discourse and its close analysis allows us to uncover what societies are struggling with when handling artifacts of the past in the present day
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/29659
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/29659
LA eng
DS Minerva
RD 27 abr 2026