Introduction

Images, being narrative structures, render memories tangible, while their power is based on the functions of memory. Although political memorials and memorial locations in Cyprus seem to go unnoticed in citizens’ daily routines, they function as “figures of memory” (Assmann and Czaplicka 1988, 129) that regulate political rhetoric, detect (hi)story-telling, and shape identities, both on a collective as well as on an individual level. They populate the Greek Cypriot part of the island in impressive density—in an average of approximately one every 10 km2—and usually individually commemorate the dead fighters. They mainly focus on the actors of the 1956–1959 EOKA struggle against the British rulers but honor all dead and missing until the separation of the island in 1974 included. Almost without exception, their emotionally evocative imagery nourishes anger, reiterates sadness and mourning, and implies the presence of a constant frightful enemy or the vindication of memory.

This paper will explain the reasons behind the stereotypical esthetics applied on the memorials. It will analyze why their repetitive visual connotative statements or the much less common realistic descriptive depictions (Karaiskou 2014) hold such power in detecting the “correct way” to be a member of the nation (Calhoun 1993, 231). It will focus on how narrativity perpetuates dispositions and mental structures. It will highlight the pivotal role of emotion in memory process, self-awareness, and behaviors and its consequent influence in the social sphere. It will explore the psychological repercussions of the visual forms and patterns of the memorials on the citizens and will stress attention on the emotional impact intense exposure causes. It will underline that the esthetics utilized activate the mechanisms of priming memory which interact with implicit memory and subconsciously weave a cognitive net. That cognition, in its turn, prompts a positive—in the sense of familiar—affective state on the audience because it cements pre-existing affective judgments of validity related to the authority of culture and tradition. At the same time, it exerts profound influence on reality perception.

The sense of victimhood within the Greek Cypriot society results from all the above parameters. The esthetics of the memorials, their dense presence on the island, along with the extensive commemoration of individual fighters fuel the basic “genetically hard-wired” emotions of fear, anger, and sadness that become main components of a “negative core affect” (Davis et al. 2003, 60). As Alexander and Butler Breese aptly states, “to transform individual suffering into collective trauma is cultural work” (2013, xiii). The paper will prove that because affect influences the ways we perceive information, and decisively interacts with mental structures, decision making and behaviors, in the case of memorials in the Republic of Cyprus, the workings of collective memory play a crucial role in the perception of loss. They transform individual loss into collective trauma by imbuing it into the collective identity and promptly elevate it into a constant reminder of personal—and political—commitment. Busts, statues, bas reliefs, and the black-and-white photographs of individual actors of the various ethnic conflicts perpetuate mourning on a personal level and comply with the society’s codes of family honor and remembering. In addition and at the same time, the wound caused to the family is projected as a wound to the political body, available to purify historical events and their actors. Thereof, memorials and memorial places turn into powerful mnemonic devices and markers that regulate propaganda by means of empathetic stimulations. They bridge the past with the present and legitimize ethnic aspirations and political pursuits.

Brief Political Background

Within the Greek Cypriot society, the predominant feeling of Greekness (ellinikotita) summarizes the Orthodox Christian creed and the Greek heritage and language. They remained intact despite the numerous occupations Cyprus have withstood throughout history, namely, the Franks (twelfth to fifteenth centuries), the Venetians (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries), the Ottomans (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), and the British (1878–1960). Geographically situated on a crossroad, a significant cultural assimilation and diversification would be expected to take place during the long period of these occupations. However, that happened only superficially at a state-administrative level under the recent British influence. Franks and Venetians, being Catholics, were representing the enemies of the Orthodox faith, while the Ottomans had overthrown the Byzantine Empire and, symbolically, Greek culture too, already assimilated within the Byzantine culture. Cyprus became part of the Byzantine Empire in the late fourth century, and it is important to underline that this is the only period of its history not defined as “occupation,” precisely because of sameness in creed, Greek heritage, and language (Papadakis 2008). When Greece became an independent state, the Greek Cypriots’ pursuit of union (énosis) with motherland Greece emerged as a natural consequence under the influence of Greece’s irredentist policy and the goals of “Great Idea” (Megáli Idéa) during the second half of the nineteenth century (Pollis 1996). Although in Greece the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 and the Asia Minor Catastrophe terminated that rhetoric, in Cyprus, it culminated in the coming decades and evolved into the 1955–1959 struggle, officially against the British sovereignty. When the island gained its—unexpected—independence in 1960, the dominant cultural narratives of the almost 80% Greek Cypriot population ignited the conflicts against the approximate 18% Turkish Cypriot minority. The perpetuated tension, especially during and after the 1963–1967 bloody conflicts, ended in the 1974 coup against the prime minister Archbishop Makarios III on part of some keen supporters of the “union” ideal, in the following Turkish invasion, the division of the island, and the massive displacement of the population: the Greek Cypriots inhabited the south, while the Turkish Cypriots the north of the island.

Under the Radar of Consciousness

Before I analyze how memory interacts with emotion and cognition in the public space of Cyprus, it is important to define the main terms of implicit memory and priming effect and their functions. Descartes, in his work The Passions of the Soul (1649), was the first to mention what we call “implicit” memory, while G.W. Leibniz in 1704 emphasized its importance describing it as “‘insensible’ or ‘unconscious’ perceptions […] of which we are not consciously aware, but which do influence behavior” (in Schacter 1987, 502). He sustained that we all have “remaining effects of former impressions without remembering them” (in Schacter 1987, 502). In contrast with explicit memory which involves conscious and hence intentional recollection of previous events and experiences, the term “implicit memory”—or “non-declarative memory”—refers to “a memory that does not involve conscious recollection of the previous encounter but can affect perception of the stimulus or a decision about it” (Ratcliff and McKoon 1996, 404). Contrary to what we would imagine, implicit memory and implicit learning hold an important role in visual processing (Chun and Jiang 1998). According to Lewicki et al. (1992, 801), implicit learning in particular “appears to be incomparably more able to process formally complex knowledge structures, faster, and ‘smarter’ overall than our ability to think and identify meanings of stimuli in a consciously controlled manner”. When we look, our visual system allocates our attention depending on past experience, especially if they were important to our goals or interests (Chun and Jiang 1998; Kristjansson and Campana 2010; Maxfield 1997). Experiments proved that repetitive exposure to a particular stimulus has direct effects on both explicit and implicit memory, although explicit memory involves different parts of the brain and performs different tasks. According to Amodio (2013, 175) “social psychological modes of implicit associations are consistent with semantic forms of learning and memory” because semantic memory, which makes part of explicit, depends on culture and hence “implicit and explicit memory performance for particular stimuli [is] positively correlated” (Kristjansson and Campana 2010, 6). These general guidelines of implicit memory functions will prove of fundamental importance in the discourse of memorials in the Republic of Cyprus.

Leibniz seems to have also sensed the existence of a specific form of implicit memory, what is known today as “priming.” That is, the influence of one stimulus on the response to another. The function of priming is usually defined as the “speed of responses to perceptual objects that results from recent previous encounters with the objects” (Ratcliff and McKoon 1996, 404). Leibniz had noticed that “often, we have an extraordinary facility for conceiving certain things, because we formerly conceived them, without remembering them” (in Schacter 1987, 502). However, what Leibniz implies here is not only the speed of the response but the profound role of priming in shaping preferences, because priming “influences the way attention shifts within the visual field, with attention being more likely to shift to, or shift faster to, those features sharing characteristics with previously presented items of interest” (Kristjansson and Campana 2010, 8). Based on the principle of “automatic spreading activation” (Masson 1995, 3; see also Maxfield 1997), repeated exposures enhance preference for the simple reason that “we like familiar objects because we enjoy recognizing familiar objects” (Zajonc 2001, 225), or because our sense of “familiar” automatically classifies them as “safe” (Zajonc 2001, 226). Preferences are instrumental in political propaganda. They are salient factors of social behaviors, sources of social stability or change, and can be acquired by imitation, or stabilized by “operant conditioning” (Zajonc 2001, 224).

Cornerstone argument in our discussion is the interrelations among memory, identity, and images. Sociologists and psychologists such as Maurice Halbwachs or Émile Durkheim insist on the social nature of memory (Gedi and Elam 1996), while, in the same vein, historians such as Gillis state that both identity and memory “are political and social constructs” and hence “are not things we think about, but things we think with” (1994, 5). Whether we are pure and sole social constructs or not, the fact remains that our social, collective experience profoundly dictates how we frame memories and concepts. According to Damasio (1994, 100) our memory is “essentially reconstructive.” As a consequence of the fluid constructs of constant recollections from a variety of stored information, whenever we recall a given object or event, “we do not get an exact reproduction but rather an interpretation, a newly reconstructed version of the original” (Damasio 2006, 100). More than that, these recollections are susceptible to emotion (Dillon et al. 2007; Zajonc 1980) and “when we try to […] recognize, or retrieve […], the affective quality of the original input is the first element to emerge” (Zajonc 1980, 154). A fundamental parameter in this process is the role of representation: memories are products of experience and become tangible through visual representations. When imagery is associated with collective memory and identity, the narrative structures we frame it with are the result of conscious manipulations and subconscious absorptions; they are socially standardized and, hence, by default mediated. In his iconic work The Emotional Brain, LeDoux sustains that “[e]motional responses are, for the most part, generated unconsciously” (1996, 17) with “only the outcome of cognitive or emotional processing entering awareness” (ibid, 21). He argues that visual stimuli and representations in particular “find their way into [our] long-term memory bank” (1966, 30) where they acquire meaning, while activating emotional reactions. Even more, “emotions are more easily influenced when we are not aware that the influence is occurring” (ibid, 59) and “create a flurry of activity all devoted to one goal” (ibid, 300). A number of psychologists further proved that “emotional responses can be created even when we have no awareness of the stimulus that causes them” (Heath and Nairn 2005, 269). If “feelings and emotions have primacy over thoughts” (Heath and Nairn 2005, 269), and learning “interact[s] with our emotional memory stores” (Heath and Nairn 2005, 269), then, indeed, knowledge is the final product of concepts linked through “meaningful relations” (Maxfield 1997, 206). However, the importance of what Maxfield states does not only regard the neurological functions, during which “when a concept’s node becomes active […] activation spreads to other related nodes making available information about the concept and preparing the system to identify related concepts should they, too, appear in the environment” (Masson 1995, 3). It mainly implies that the ways we handle our memory stores are predominantly cultural, therefore mediated, and play a crucial role on how individual and collective awareness are experienced. In the context of the political memorials in the Republic of Cyprus, it is accurate to say that “[j]ust as dreams enable us to study the individual unconscious, so iconic commemoration may be treated as the via regia to the collective unconscious” (Warner as in Schwarts 1982, 377).

Under these conditions, narrativity acquires profound significance (Kansteiner 2002) and visuality becomes a pivotal vehicle of collective memory and identity. Back in 1988, Foster explicitly embedded visuality in cultural contexts and constructs and explained it mainly as a social process. He defined that—very debated—term as descriptive of “how we see; how we are able, allowed, or made to see; and how we see this seeing or the unseen therein” (Foster as in Mirzoeff 2006, 55). To accentuate even more the role of imagery, Paivio (1975, 635) notes that “the imagery system [of our brains] is activated more directly by perceptual objects or pictures than by linguistic stimuli” and our reactions seem to be “faster for pictures than for words”. Zajonc (1980, 168) adds that “all sorts of judgments are faster and more efficient for pictures” because they are “able to evoke an affective reaction more directly and faster than words”. That effective “picture-superiority effect” (Weldon and Bellinger 1997, 1162) is the main reason why images hold such a crucial role in making tangible complex concepts and ideologies and in having a profound emotional impact.

Constructions of Identity and Victimhood

Over a century ago, Renan observed that “suffering in common unifies more than joy does,” and “[w]here national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties and require a common effort” (as in, Bhabha, 1990, 19).

Political memorials and memorial locations in the Republic of Cyprus figuratively and literally culminate the hegemonic historical and political narratives because of the institutionalized rituals—thereof the embodiment and enactment of memory—they involve. They are semantic codes indicative of how “the past is built into the present” (Brockmeier 2002, 33). Although seemingly invisible in citizens’ daily routines and “activated” only during commemorative rituals, they exist in a constant flow of symbolic meaning and power and in an uninterrupted interaction with a variety of other available visual symbols, such as the country’s flag, the visual depictions of the “I do not forget” (den xehnó) slogan, or the iconic black-clothed women—mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives of dead and missing fighters—that also operate as mnemonic devices. They all rise the same array of empathetic reactions and multiply their connotative symbolisms of victimhood.

Cyprus’ intensively collectivistic type of society facilitated victimhood to effectively tap into both the social and the individual sphere by means of the genetically hard-wired (Davis et al. 2003, 60) emotions of fear, anger and sadness. Within the Greek Cypriot society sameness in Greek language, Orthodox creed, and a tradition deriving practically from the Byzantine times built during the centuries, a high level of cultural homogeneity stayed intact for a variety of reasons: being the majority ethnic group on the island, Greek Cypriots imposed their cultural narrative as dominant, while the constant defense against consecutive conquerors, hence the constant need to safeguard us against them, rendered loyalty to the group and the moral values it represents a sine qua non-prerequisite of belonging. The violent conflicts between the two predominant ethnic groups from 1960 to 1974 enhanced even more that condition. In addition, due to the small size of the island and the limited population—approximately 800,000 according to the 2011 census—intense family ties characterize the Cypriot society and family members are socially accountable to honor their dead and prove worthy of them by defending the values they died for. In collectivistic societies where the focus is not on the person’s but on the group’s survival, being accountable to the group is a common experience, while recognition by its members, hence reputation and access to “belonging,” depends on unquestionable conformity and is essential for existing (Triandis 2001). In Cyprus’ case, loyalty renders remembering a paramount parameter of social behavior and that includes enactments of the shared cultural values, as well as individual honoring of the dead.

Commemoration in Cyprus demands conformity on both the public and the private sphere precisely because of the deep roots it has in the cultural past—old ways and rituals for mourning the dead since Byzantine era and “etiquette” of the dead’s family social behavior. These old ways, along with the moral validity and value they carry, remained unaltered due to the collectivistic type of Cypriot society. Thereof, the cultural nature of these practices enabled the acquisition of an intense political, hence public, dimension which exploits private emotions and profoundly dictates how to frame memories and concepts. Forgetting in Cyprus is equivalent to betraying, even more so because remembering also encompasses the recuperation of the lost land. At the same time, by defending “the values they died for,” the living intensify and validate the recursive narratives of historic memory which tend to sacrifice accuracy of events by means of diminishing, altering, or omitting. Concurrently, they focus on what moves the most the social group, precisely because affect is less diverse and more abstract than cognitive analysis and appraisal (Zajonc 2001).

The ‘Cyprus Problem’ constitutes a common denominator that influences the rhetoric of all political parties in the Republic of Cyprus both on a factual and on a symbolic level, no matter what their political stances and rhetoric are (Mavratsas 2010). While parties leaning toward the Cypriot-centric ideology and identity formation encompass Turkish Cypriots as integral part of “Cyprus” and are willing to acknowledge that violence occurred on both sides, the political affiliations supporting the Greek-centered identity are considerably more influential (Konstantinidis 2011). The demonization of the enemy and the politics of fear nourished effectively—and without substantial contradiction, due to the potential impact on electoral results—the already existing insecurities and fears of the social body and highlighted the Greek-centered identity as a guaranteed protection against cultural and political erosion (Mavratsas 2005). Concepts of pure, homogenized societies, introvert interpretations of “the people” and clear boundaries between us and them are currently salient in populist rhetoric of right-wing political parties in EU, too (Wodak 2015). However, despite superficial similarities, this discourse in Cyprus is not the result of recent fears and socio-political challenges; it originates from grassroots cultural and social notions and affective reactions to historical experience. In addition, the memory of consecutive subordinations from the twelfth century until 1960 gradually created a collective mentality of weakness and fatalism, vulnerable to conceptual manipulations. On the other hand, however, regardless of its origins, in the present time, that discourse creates concrete negative stereotypes against the Turkish Cypriot community, influences the interpretation of historical events, and perpetuates rigid notions on the associations between national and cultural identity.

In the Republic of Cyprus, cultural representations that defines the “nation”—although a product of discourse and hence open to change—is intensively reproducing its components in the public sphere. Because of the particular characteristics of the Cypriot society and the cultural background already described, the historical events since 1960, the high level of affect mnemonic devices generate, and mainly due to the issue at stake—the territorial unity of the country, one of the objective criteria to define a nation, along with language and culture (Wodak et al. 2009)—these official cultural repetitions remain highly unaltered in time and across the political parties. Where differences exist, they are rather silenced on an official and public level than overtly debated. It is important to mention here that even when Cypriot-centric ideology seemed to gain political and social support, the country’s national anthem—appropriation of the Greek anthem—was not challenged, although “a national anthem is a universal sign of particularity” and “becoming a ‘proper’ nation would mean selecting a single ‘official’ anthem” (Billig 1995, 86). At the same time, political rhetoric, regardless of the political affiliation, allude to the existence of one, homogeneous identity; disregard the complexity of such formations either on individual or on a collective level; suppress internal differences; and consequently control ideological dilemmas in public sphere. Within this context, although collective memory cannot equate with history and “there is not one single past nor one unique narrative” (Wodak and de Cillia 2007, 339), victimhood reaffirms the alignment of personal memories with collective—consequently with official narratives, too—and provides a persuasive, convenient and absolving answer to the question “who is the greater victim? Who has suffered more?” (Wodak and de Cillia 2007, 345). On the eve of Cyprus’ accession in EU, these were the main causes of failure of the political discourse supporting the formation of a European identity which would encompass both major ethnic communities, acknowledging trauma on both sides and ending the territorial division (Mavratsas 2010). Even more so, precisely because of the pending issue of the occupied land and the deriving cultural semiology, current EU policies that encourage commemorating the wounds inflicted on the others, rather than affirming the own status of victimhood, have not influenced the Cypriot society and will probably take long to become official public practices.

Materiality of Memory and Visualities of Victimhood

Since 1974, the motto “den xehnó” (“I do not forget”), which refers to the dead and missing of the 1974 Turkish invasion in Cyprus and to the division of the island, turned into a powerful verbal and visual symbol within the local society. In fact, I would dare say it could perfectly summarize and describe the attitudes and mindset of the Greek Cypriots since then, despite the variations in political interpretations it might involve. Although the motto certainly states an explicit, conscious intention as a consequence of a real experience, its actual power is located on the implicit associations it produces and on the emotion it carries. The daily waving of “little, banal words,” as Billig (1995, 96) notes, suggests how the national “we” is constructed, while “who ‘we’ are, indicates who ‘we’ are not” (ibid, 78). The constant reiterations of den xehnó use a variety of visual depictions in public sphere, on top of the verbal statement. Among them are crosses, the bleeding occupied part of Cyprus, the island’s outline on a cemetery background, barbed wires, executions, Cyprus’ flag, photographs of dead and missing, mourning children, and widows (Karaiskou 2014). Regardless of the visual narrative applied, each iconological element directly associates the two words with the concepts of blood, death, and land occupation; implies duty on part of those who survived and their descendants; and induces emotions of sadness, fear, and anger. Commenting the “continual ‘flagging’ […] of nationhood” Billig (1995, 8) underlines the daily, unceremonious reproduction of national identity stemming from a “whole complex of beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations, and practices” (ibid, 6), which builds a familiar, almost natural, environment to the point that it goes unnoticed. However, no matter how unnoticed this familiar environment is, it is crucial for the societal coherence precisely because it nourishes the subconscious awareness of nationalism. Because of the 1974 events, the flag of the Republic of Cyprus, where the outline of the island is depicted, acquired additional “meaningful relations” in comparison to the 1960–1974 period of time: those of a suffering, bleeding, and divided nation. Every depiction of the intact, whole national body reminds of the deprived land. It is an explicit visual I do not forget statement which conveys the duty to restore the national body to its previous state and, as intended, it automatically attributes to the motto the emotional and ideological values of a national affirmation.

The identification of Orthodox creed and Cypriot Orthodox Church to national and cultural identities as the pivotal marker of us adds a particular element to the hegemonic narratives of historic events and the perception of reality and loss: that of sanctity which elevates the value of sacrifice above the mundane needs and purifies it. Especially, the EOKA 1955–1959 fighters in Cyprus—to whom the majority of memorials are dedicated—were promptly identified as heroes and martyrs due to the direct relation of sacrificial death to religious doctrines and the association of heroes to sanctity deriving from Greek folk tradition since the Byzantine times (Karaiskou 2013). The leadership of Archbishop Makarios III, one of the two iconic figures of the EOKA struggle along with General Georgios Grivas, bestowed additional symbolisms to the context of the 1955–1959 guerilla fight—namely, liberation and “resurrection” of Cyprus and a political life in union with motherland Greece—and enhanced the aforementioned connotations. The density of EOKA memorials on the island, especially since the establishment of the Historical Archive of the Board for the Historical Memory of the EOKA 1955–1959 struggle (SIMAE) in March 1993, is highly indicative of the symbolic and factual attributions both official state and the citizen attribute to the fight and its actors. In accordance, all other dead fighters during the various interethnic conflicts of the 1960s and the 1974 invasion, along with the missing, are wrapped with the same allure of martyrdom, while the locations where their memorials are situated became not only “lieux de memoire” (Nora 1989) but sacred loci.

In the same vein, on the flag of Cyprus, the two depicted branches that support the island’s outline are not a neutral visual of a flora species but a stimulus which prompts an instant association to laurel branches that symbolize sacrificial death and heroism. The flag was designed by a Turkish Cypriot in 1960 and it is unknown whether his intention was to depict an olive wreath—symbol of victory, appropriate to the newborn state and to the aspiration of a peaceful cohabitation of the two ethnic groups—or two crossed laurel branches, a symbolic commemoration to the dead. The two plants have a very similar shape of leaves and only visual details in their depiction, such as the olives and the placement of the branches, define their identity and symbolic meaning. Either way, the omission of the fruits along with the clear crossed arrangement of the two branches cemented the symbol as laurel, a distinct visual pattern within the Greek, Greek Cypriot, and in general Western cultural context, and was promptly officially adopted by the Republic of Cyprus. In both countries, the crossed laurel branches accompany national symbols and appear on political memorials and memorials of public figures with distinct social service. Especially in Cyprus, they frame the black-and-white photographs of the dead fighters that decorate their tombs in the cemeteries or their memorials. Very recently, after the acceptance of the Republic of Cyprus as EU member in 2004 and the assumption of the EU Presidency in 2012, olives decorated the two branches in all official state websites. This slight visual diversification of the symbol in all official communication channels to the presumed (or the initially intended?) olive branches, underlines even more the power of the visual symbols. It is important to note that when it comes to visual symbols, there is no ambiguity in their formation precisely because of their fundamentally social role and communicative power. Their components pre-exist in the collective memory stores and are carefully selected amidst the available items on the basis of the aforementioned “meaningful relations” (Maxfield 1997, 206). They become stereotypes with a predominant guiding mission: to secure the comprehension of a statement. Even more so when hegemonic narratives are involved. Olive branch is a broadly known symbol of peace and victory in Western culture, deriving both from Greek mythology and Christianity—in the Book of Genesis, the dove carried an olive branch to Noah’s Ark. Its symbolic depiction, however, involves only one branch and only in specific occasions is depicted as a wreath (with two branches) symbolizing victory—a kótinos was the prize for the winner at the Olympic Games. While the olive branch symbolizes life, the crossed laurel branches symbolize death. Life inevitably embraces the future, while death—even the heroic and sacrificial—regards the past. In addition, from 1974 and on, in Cyprus, that symbol defined a clear division between us and them, where “them” is the perpetrator, responsible for the division of the island. It seems that the Greek Cypriot psyche associates itself with the past, with death, blood, and sacrifice, on such a deep level that embedded that effect into the most sublime national emblem: the flag.

On the more tangible level of everyday life, the black-clothed women, mothers predominantly, though sisters, daughters, and wives are not excluded, constitute further “meaningful relations” loaded with the same emotions of sadness, anger, and fear. They are directly associated with the iconic black-and-white photographs of grieving women in vigils and protests in 1974 and the years right after the division of the island, the female figures in public commemorative sculpture, and their fragmented depictions that accompany versions of the den xehnó statement (Karaiskou and Christiansen 2014). Many of them are actual witnesses of the 1974 events and experienced personally the loss of a beloved father, brother, son, or husband. They lived in fear and pain and felt anger too. Sant Cassia notes that they constitute the cultural and “political signifiers of loss and recovery” (2007, 72). Because of their role in the Greek Cypriot society (Karaiskou and Christiansen 2014), the resultant emotional symbolisms they exert in local society turned them into “bodies of evidence” (Sant Cassia 2007), a powerful rhetorical—hence, propaganda—tool that validates history and reality and justifies current political decisions and claims. Patriotism justifies the presence of women on war memorials in their stereotyped roles as mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters (they offer their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers to the nation) or as allegoric figures personifying social values. Concomitantly, though, while the innate abstractness of these symbolisms carved in stone reaffirm the framework of social values and do justice to the “actual actions of the nation” (Abousnnouga and Machin 2013, 163), the iconic black-and-white photographs of grieving women and the black-clothed women in flesh and blood render collective loss tangible, personal, and real.

The effects of implicit and priming memory and their intersections with emotions are of particular interest in the case of Greek Cypriot memorials. They are scattered on the southern part of the island and attest the “petrified memory” of every dead or missing male relative since, mostly, the 1950s. Abousnnouga and Machin (2013, 3) note that “in each monument, the identities of those who fought, the ideas, values, and attitudes associated with their actions must be communicated by appropriate design choices that support the legitimacy of the nation-state”. However, for that attempt to come to fruition, it is essential that citizens share the same “meaning potential” (ibid, 22) of words, concepts, and visuals, namely, the same visuality. If language, as Foucault (1994) claims, has the power to govern and paralyze us, then the visual language carved on marble or cast in bronze becomes the utterly tangible vehicle for the materialization of cultural memory. Being mnemonic devices that bear the responsibility to support hegemonic narratives, war monuments reveal as much as they conceal. Here, their analysis is based on a cultural, social, and historical background where themes and subjects draw their meaning through symbolic ramifications and connotations.

The visual patterns commemorative sculpture rigorously engages in the Republic of Cyprus create a familiar “landscape” with salient components deriving from the Greek Cypriot tradition. The authority these patterns hold is due to their Greekness (ellinikotita), while the resistance of the materials in time and wear multiply the symbolic value this carved or cast memory carries. Hence, they formulate an affective—more than cognitive—background which further validates their use. According to Amodio (2013, 175) “affective associations are learned quickly and are relatively indelible,” even more so because of our faster reaction to pictures, as aforementioned (Paivio 1975). At the same time, the repetitive application of these patterns cement affective judgments of validity in a continuous cycle of cause and effect. References to the Greek classical antiquity are systematically established through integration of architectural elements such as columns of Ionic and Corinthian order, capitals, pediments crowning tombstones, embossed torches or decorative stylized patterns, symbolic figures such as angels or female victories, or free versions of iconic classic artworks. Indeed, the application of the latter assert the effectiveness—and thereof power—of implicit, cultural in this case, memory. The majority of the above architectural elements acquire an elaborated narrative form in the cases of memorial locations. For example, the entrance to the EOKA memorial in Avgorou village (Ammochostos district) reminds of an ancient Greek temple while the actual commemoration location resembles the Mycenaean tholos tombs type. The memorial occupies a considerable piece of land and the distance between these two spots (entrance and chamber) takes after the entrance passage dromos which, in the archeological locations of Mycenae, leads to the doorway of the tomb. All these visual components of commemorative sculpture feel natural, expected, and indispensable parts of national and cultural narratives as well as of the self, because they have imbued in any possible explicit or implicit mode all levels of individual and social awareness. Especially due to the cultural homogeneity of the Cypriot society and the priority of affect over cognition, the subliminal conditions under which these visual stimuli were obtained eradicated the potential polysemy in processing, evaluating, and understanding them. Thereof, they bypass a variety of individual parameters that intervene judgment and evaluation, such as differences based on mindset, character, and social and educational background, and secure a “homogeneous array of reactions” (Zajonc 2001, 227). Under these conditions, the frequency of political memorials in the public sphere of Cyprus “form[s] the basis for social organization and cohesion—basic sources of psychological and social stability” (Zajonc 2001, 227).

The notable reduction of the individual facial characteristics and the lack of expression among the vast majority of busts, bas reliefs, and statues of fighters facilitate the formation of stereotypes, aligning with the mechanisms of priming memory and enhance its effects. The particular sameness among them, created by the lack of realistic age descriptions, the stylization of social status (soldiers or civilian fighters), the austerity and solemnity of the faces, the assertive frontality, and lack of motion, also encompasses continuity in time. When symbols are involved, continuity is essential to certify value endurance. That peculiar “abstractness” alters the perception of loss; shifts the private identity of the dead into the collective sphere; and turns every deceased son, father, brother, or husband into an available national object of mourning. Vice versa, the visual ambiguity of individualism allows the emotional appropriation of loss on part of each member of the society.

Realistic depictions are limited to a considerably small number of memorials precisely because they involve a limited application of transcendent symbols and, inversely proportional, an increase of mundane elements, where diversity and cognitive critical analysis and perception gain ground. Commenting British memorials Abousnnouga and Machin note that “[w]here detail is smoothed out, we have metaphorical certainty and idealization as opposed to full naturalistic modality where we have complexity and greater moral ambiguity (2013, 155). In Cyprus, realistic depictions involve motion, facial expressions, and richer depictive and narrative details. Militaristic postures and gestures, encapsulated in clenched fists, brandishing guns, hands on the hips, frowning eyebrows or lips, or expressions of mourning—involving almost exclusively women in their role as mothers (Karaiskou and Christiansen 2014)—are among the most common of the realistic narratives. However, even in these cases, there is a notable repetition of motional and emotional signs that either exhume dominance or grief and endurance. They imply past threats and fears, perpetuate in the present time past traumatic experiences, and remind of the obligation to the national cause. Although they result in a different level of stereotypical iconography, they meticulously assert that the wound caused to the family and to the political body is projected both as personal and as collective trauma.

Conclusions

The Historical Archive of the Board for the Historical Memory of the EOKA 1955–1959 struggle (SIMAE) produces annually a wall-calendar which, instead of the usual commemoration of the Orthodox Church saints, is populated by the dates of death of the EOKA fighters. In the broader public space, the institutionalized—religious—rites that populate the calendar year require the enactment of memory and reiterate the embodiment of loss. The conflation between “historical trauma” and “structural trauma” (LaCapra 1999, 721) on the island reaffirms that collective trauma is the product of cultural work (Alexander and Butler Breese 2013) precisely because of the reconstructive nature and the operations of affective memory, as well as the effectiveness of “operant conditioning” (Zajonc 2001, 224). In the highly culturally homogeneous society of Cyprus, where since 1974 Greek Cypriots constitute almost the absolute majority, “belonging” is based on the compliance to the “patterns of publicly available symbols” (Olick 1999, 336) that collective memory activates. They convert material into spiritual and spiritual into empirical (Kokosalakis in Meusburger et al., 2011) and cement their validity as a feeling of “rightness,” “familiar” or “safe,” and therefore “natural.” The use of the term “myth” in the past instead of what we name “collective memory” in current scholarly research (Gedi and Elam 1996) or its close association to the term “ritual” (Hirst and Manier 2008) renders apparently evident the communicative power of meaningful relations (Maxfield 1997, 206) on which political rhetoric—hence propaganda—counts. The emotionally evocative imagery engaged in a variety of forms in the public sphere in Cyprus constitutes a multi-level powerful mnemonic device that bridges present time with the “sanctity” of tradition, shapes perceptions of reality, eliminates or diminishes attempts of critical approach, and deepens the ideology of consensus in the collective awareness. Eventually, it secures social stability and cohesion and provides a solid ground that perpetuates victimhood as a social, political, and ethical category (LaCapra 1999).