Monumental after life
Placing the unknown soldier in Baghdad’s commemorative landscape
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22351284 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Wien (0009-0008-8770-9907, University of Maryland, College Park, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 381-395 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2515-8538 • E-ISSN: 2515-8546 |
| Publisher | Intellect (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1386/jciaw_00177_1 |
| OpenAlex | W7155601689 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
Since the middle of the twentieth century, consecutive political regimes have tried to leave an imprint on Baghdad’s urban topography, implementing successive development plans that have included the building of massive military monuments like the famous Martyr’s Monument and the Victory Arches. Focusing on their lesser-known sibling, the Unknown Soldier Monument, this article traces the evolution of modern Iraqi monument culture, connecting the heyday of the country’s ultra-modernist trends in art and architecture in the 1950s with the 1970s and 1980s and onwards, when the Ba‘th regime absorbed the protagonists of this trend and their skills to serve its authoritarian obsessions. Remarkably, the names of leading figures in the modernist Iraqi cultural scene keep resurfacing throughout this period, transcending the breaks and fissures that have continued to plague Iraqi politics since the inception of the state
Authoritarianism · Politics · Victory · Archaeological Research and Protection · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Architecture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |