Millennial politics of architecture: myths and nationhood in Budapest

Abstract

Politics in Hungary since 1989 has been focusing on nation-building. Each government has had a license to articulate what it is to be Hungarian, in the public realm with public funds. While current political debates are heated and focus yet again on defining Hungarian national identity, this article takes a distance from contemporary politics. It studies a situation ten years earlier, when the current government party Fidesz – which took a landslide victory in the 2010 general elections after eight years of socialist-liberal government – was in office for the first time from 1998 to 2002. Exploring the debate from the perspective of architecture, it reveals how Fidesz sought to mark their space and express their sense of nationhood in Budapest around the millennium. Beside publicly sponsored institutions and commemoration, architectural forms became contested as they were used to express nationality. The National Theatre, Millennium Park and House of Terror Museum, each broke with the urban flow in the left-leaning metropolis while representing the Fidesz discourse on Hungary. The article, besides analyzing postcommunist nation-building, reflects on the interconnection between architecture, politics and memory in an urban symbolic landscape. It discusses how myths of nationhood can be represented in the cityscape.

Keywords:

• architecture
• memory
• nationalism
• political symbols
• Hungary

Notes

Frontier here is understood in terms of discourse theory, as a division-line or line of opposition, not a frontier in geographical terms as the limit between us and the unknown, potential territory – even though a notion of this is retained in the discourse theoretical “frontier's” reluctance to fully engage or recognize the other although as an articulated limit to the self it also presents the future livelihood of the self. Frontier differs from a mere limit through setting up a confrontation (Norval 2000).

Discourse is here understood as a system of signification, articulated to contain certain elements and limits, following poststructuralist discourse theory (Laclau 1990; Norval 2000). In other words, it is composed of nodal points and borders on a constitutive “other”, which for its parts helps to define the system. Fidesz' discourse was composed of certain key things or points Fidesz put forward, whether explicitly or implicitly. In this article, the Fidesz discourse is a sum of official rhetoric and deeds, mainly by the party leader Viktor Orbán. Elements of a discourse understood in this way can also be practices or architectural forms or acts. Furthermore, here the emphasis has been on “Fidesz discourse” and Viktor Orbán; even though Orbán is the most authoritative figure in the party, one has to admit that there is no singular and homogeneous Fidesz discourse. Rather it is of course a heterogeneous articulation, slightly simplified here for the purposes of research.