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collective memory

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Sadowski, Mirosław M. 2021. “Fluttering the Past in the Present. The Role of Flags in the Contemporary Society: Law, Politics, Identity and Memory.” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_5.

As we advance into the twenty-first century, more and more of what has once been crucial to the functioning of a society, slides into oblivion. However, certain agents of the past, carriers of social memory, prevail. One such an agent is the flag. More than just a mere symbol, the flag bears an opulent amount of meaning, sometimes accumulated over the centuries, at other times acquired overnight, evoking either love and pride, fear and contempt, or just indifference. The purpose of this paper is to analyse flags as carriers of collective memories and of local and national identity, and to compare various legal provisions controlling and protecting them. In the first part of the paper, the author introduces the concept of collective memory, showing how flags—carriers of memory—are connected to it. The second part of the paper is devoted to the questions of identity and national identity, and the ways they intersect with collective memories and, ultimately, flags. In the third, main part of the paper, the author ventures to examine the role of flags in the contemporary society. Applying the findings of the previous two chapters to a number of mini-case studies (Poland, Brazil, Australia, Greece, USA, various former USSR territories, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Hungary, Cyprus and Canada), the author shows how different societies hold different attitudes towards flags and how, even in a digital society we currently live in, such a material thing as a flag is vital for the creation of a group’s identity, and can still evoke deep and often completely conflicting feelings, even leading to conflict.

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Wagner, Anne, and Sarah Marusek. 2021. Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8.

The book deals with the identification of “identity” based on culturally specific color codes and images that conceal assumptions about members of a people comprising a nation, or a people within a nation. Flags narrate constructions of belonging that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people’s history. Bennet (2005) defines identity as “the imagined sameness of a person or social group at all times and in all circumstances”. While such likeness may be imagined or even perpetuated, the idea of sameness may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts and presents. Visually evocative and ideologically representative, flags are recognized symbols fusing color with meaning that prescribe a story of unity. Yet, through semiotic confrontation, there may be different paths leading to different truths and applications of significance. Knowing this and their function, the book investigates these transmitted values over time and space. Indeed, flags may have evolved in key historical periods, but contemporaneously transpire in a variety of ways. The book investigates these transmitted values: Which values are being transmitted? Have their colors evolved through space and time? Is there a shift in cultural and/or collective meaning from one space to another? What are their sources? What is the relationship between law and flags in their visual representations? What is the shared collective and/or cultural memory beyond this visual representation? Considering the complexity and diversity in the building of a common memory with flags, the book interrogates the complex color-coded sign system of particular flags and their meanings attentive to a complex configuration of historical, social and cultural conditions that shift over time.

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Gardella, Peter. 2014. American Civil Religion: What Americans Hold Sacred. Oxford University Press.

Chapters: What is American civil religion?; America: the name, the concept, and the word; Jamestown and its anniversaries; The Mayflower Compact ; Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims, and the Indians; City on a hill: from Jesus to Winthrop, Kennedy, and Reagan; The Freedom Trail and Boston Common; The Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the slave quarters ; The flag; The Declaration of Independence; The Great Seal and the dollar bill; The Constitution; Washington, D.C.: the city, the Capitol, and the White House; The Star-Spangled Banner; The Washington Monument; The Battle Hymn of the Republic; Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address; Lincoln's second inaugural address; Arlington National Cemetery; The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island; America the Beautiful; The Lincoln Memorial; Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills; God Bless America ; This Land is Your Land; The four freedoms; Iwo Jima: the picture, the monuments, and the battle; Disney parks; The Kennedy inaugural; Kings' speeches: the Mall (1963) and Memphis (1968); Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Transforming the National Mall; Ground zero, martyrdom, and empire; Conflict, consensus, and the future

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