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The Familiar Converted into the Other
values consciously intended by their makers, but radiate new forms of value formed
in the collective, political unconscious of their beholders. As objects of surplus
value, of simultaneous over—and underestimation, these stand at the interface of
the most fundamental social conflicts” (Mitchell 2005: 105).
The Otherness in monumental art and the othering process itself differ from
the ways of creating the familiar and the Other in other media. As a rule, monu¬
ments do not serve to create and propagate images of the Other. In this sense, the
Other is ‘invisible’ within monumental art. The places on the pedestals are reserved
(or at least used to be reserved) for the familiar. Only at a certain moment in time
is process of othering triggered, gradually advancing over time. Monumental repre¬
sentations in stone do not change, but rather a transformation occurs in the images
they perpetuate. As a result, the familiar becomes converted into the Other. This
process takes place on the level of the consciousness of the viewers. No small role
in the process of othering, in the context of monumental art, is played by, among
others, the physical space in which a monument is situated. What is significant is
that the process is bipolar. Not only does the space influence the monument, the
monument can also influence the othering of the space. The physical relation¬
ships taking place between the object and the viewer are also important. This is
the characteristic that singles out monumental art from among all other types of
representation.
Images of the Other in the context of monumental art do not need to be per¬
ceivable directly and by all. However, this does not mean that they do not exist
or that they do not function within social imagination. This is what the specific
perversity of the monumental images of the familiar and the Other consists in: the
fact that they are divided and, simultaneously, inextricably connected.
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