Friday Seminar Series III: URBAN RECONSTRUCTION IN POST-CONFLICT CITIES

Friday 30 November 2012, 10:00-12:00 GAU - Millennium Senate Congress Hall URBAN RECONSTRUCTION IN POST-CONFLICT CITIES: THE CASE OF MOSTAR by Francesco Mazzucchelli (NIAS, Netherlands – University of Bologna, Italy) Abstract: Since the last century, cities have become, more and more often, targets of acts of war, terrorism and political violence. The recently coined notion of “urbicide” has been used by many scholars (Bogdanovic, Coward, Graham, Shaw) to refer to such deliberate actions of destruction against the city`s inhabited space. But what happens inside the city when war and terror are over? My seminar will explore the role of reconstruction strategies in the processes of transformation which characterize the cities in post-conflict periods. In particular I will focus on architectonic restoration and reconstructions of damaged buildings, seen as practices of re-writing the palimpsest of the city that can determine in which way (and if) the past should be remembered. Semiotics (Greimas, Lotman, Eco) – with its attention to social meanings and its narrative conception of the meaning organisation – will be used as a tool to explain and analyse the way in which social meanings of a place are shared and change. The proposed case study is Mostar and its post-conflict transformation and reconstruction. Bio-Statement: Francesco Mazzucchelli holds a PhD from the University of Bologna (Italy) and is a Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Disciplines of Communication of the University of Bologna of the same university. He is also currently a Fellow at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar), where he contributes to the research project “Terrorscapes: Transnational Memories of Violence in Europe”. He is the author of the book Urbicidio. Il senso dei luoghi tra distruzioni e ricostruzioni in ex Jugoslavia, Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2010.