Iconic Socioclasm: Destroying Cultural Heritage to Shatter Social Identities

Guest lecture by Christoph Günther (University of Erfurt). Cultural properties, from monuments over community buildings to trees and stones, are not mere objects but may help people making sense of who they are and how they are related to the world around them. Cultural properties thus might be a vital part of people’s social identities, created, among others, in physical contact with certain objects or in interaction with others at specific sites.

In this lecture, I will use the destruction of cultural heritage sites in Iraq and Syria by ISIS to argue that these properties have been targeted because they were important nodes of the social fabric of specific communities and were entangled with local people’s (and sometimes pilgrim’s) social identities. I further argue that images of these violent acts are geared at keeping the memory of the destruction alive, reminding those affected by it that a part of who they are has been shattered.