Collective Memory and Eternal Fascism: Colonial Materiality and the Metamorphoses of Authoritarianism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.7472Keywords:
social memory, historical heritage, fascism, decoloniality, public spaceAbstract
This article examines the persistence of colonialism within the collective memory of fascism and its manifestations through heritage practices embedded in contemporary public spaces shaped by material legacies that actively anchor projects of domination. Using a qualitative approach, the research explores tensions between remembrance and erasure in urban and architectural landscapes across globalised Western societies. Drawing on the historiography of heritage, social memory, and decolonial perspectives, the study analyses how contesting colonial monuments — including statues of Christopher Columbus, Francisco Pizarro, and Robert E. Lee — provokes reactionary forces that extend beyond historical attachment. Engaging with Umberto Eco’s (1997/1998) concept of “eternal fascism”, Aníbal Quijano’s (2000) notion of the “coloniality of power”, and Achille Mbembe’s (2011) concept of “necropolitics”, the article contends that these remnants function as material crystallisations and spatial supports for the legitimisation of contemporary far-right discourses. The study concludes that the material re-signification of these sites of memory is not naïve revisionism, but rather an essential decolonial praxis to reveal suppressed memories and to prevent public spaces from serving as protective shields for the naturalisation of barbarity and subalternisation.
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