Tracing otherness in online cemetery audience research: the ‘Other’ at the cemetery of Anastasis of Piraeus and the Third Cemetery of Athens

ABSTRACT

This paper places emphasis on an unknown part of the cemetery audience, the ‘Other’. It emerged as an audience category, comprising 26 out of 214 survey participants, in a four-month online audience research regarding two Athenian cemeteries. The basic argument for the scope of this research is that in highly contested public spaces such as the Third and the Anastasis cemetery, which reflect some of the most striking abnormalities of Greece’s unequal cemetery system, ‘others’ are systematically constructed and are not co-included in ordered, face-to-face representation. Thus, we emphasise the digital form of this research as more resourceful when exploring silenced voices and invisible presences. We discuss the integral taxonomies of the ‘Other’ on the basis of the dialectic character of the place. Finally, in order to negotiate otherness as an identity marker, we focus on the opinions of the ‘Other’ audience regarding spatial practices, attitudes and emotions related to the space of the dead.

KEYWORDS:

• Online audience research
• Greek cemeteries
• the other
• otherness
• exhumation
• digestive pit

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the people who participated in the audience research. This work is dedicated to all of them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors, I.P. and G.D., upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. https://forms.gle/GVNZPr4Waicd5TBH9; Questionnaire for the Third cemetery of Athens: https://forms.gle/fhwypnTvadN2domE9. All the questionnaires are anonymous and at the front page they inform the participants regarding the scope of the research and how the data collected will be used, in order to promote scientific knowledge.

2. The Anastasis and the Third cemetery appear in eight Facebook and Instagram accounts/locations, and there are no official profiles regarding these two cemeteries. The number of followers of these pages range from two to 23. Besides the comments that announce the presence of social-media users in the two cemeteries, there is no other particular discussion. The only Athenian cemetery that presents a protogenic social-media impact (private Facebook page with photographs and information about the artistic memorial monuments) is the First cemetery of Athens, Athens’s oldest and most famous cemetery.

3. The Third cemetery hosts three Second World monuments at the Christian section and two at the Jewish section. The latter were ordered and constructed by the Jewish Community of Athens and not by the Municipality as the other three (Georgitsoyanni, 2016).

4. Five out of 13 people (38.46%) of the ‘Other’ category chose the ‘Don’t know/No opinion’ answer regarding the digestive pits. Regarding the rest of the audience (excluding the 13 people of the ‘Other’ category), 30 out of 67 people (49.25%) chose the ‘Don’t know/No opinion’ answer.

5. The word hetero-topic derives from the Greek words: ‘hetero’ which means ‘other’ and ‘topos’ which means ‘place’; as for ‘tauto-topic’ the word ‘tauto’ means the ‘same’, ‘identical’. Tauto-topic is used here so as to highlight an alternative place concept, emerging this time from the similarity – the identification between the cemetery and the people who have been there.

Additional information

Funding

This research is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) through the Operational Programme «Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning 2014-2020» in the context of the project ‘Τhe cemetery audience. The highlighting of elements of material and intangible culture of the burial sites through the “voices” of their visitors: The cases of the Anastasis Cemetery of Piraeus and the Third cemetery of Athens’ (MIS 5049029).

Notes on contributors

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou

Ioanna Paraskevopoulou is studying for her doctoral dissertation in Geography, at Harokopio University of Athens, spatial inequalities in the Third cemetery of Athens and she is a member of the scientific committee of the Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe. She has studied Political Science and Public Administration (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) and has postgraduate studies in Political Science and Sociology (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens); in Education and Culture (Harokopio University), where she researched for her dissertation the history of the First Cemetery of Athens, which was published on 2015 (Polis Editions); and in Public History (University of York), where she researched for her dissertation the administration of British historic cemeteries by Friends groups. Her research interests focus on the political and philosophical aspects of cemeteries.

Georgios Dermitzoglou

Georgios Dermitzoglou is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics and Sustainable Development of Harokopio University of Athens, on the subject of the funerary sculpture of the Anastasis Cemetery of Piraeus. He has studied History and Archaeology (University of Ioannina) and has postgraduate studies in ‘Education & Culture’ (Harokopio University) and ‘Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean: Greece, Egypt, Near East’ (University of the Aegean). He specialises in Special Education, Design of Museum Exhibitions and Educational Programs. He has worked as an archaeologist at the Ephorates of Antiquities in Greece, as a teacher in Secondary Education and Special Education Programmes, as well as an associate scientific researcher.

Georgios Kritikos

Georgios Kritikos is a Professor of Historical Geography at Harokopio University in Athens in Greece. He studied History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Scholarships allowed him to continue his postgraduate studies in the UK. He holds an MPhil in European Studies from the University of Cambridge (St Catharine’s College) and an MA in International Security Studies from the University of Leicester. He received his PhD from the Department of History and Civilisation of the European University Institute in Florence (Italy). His research has been published in books, chapters in volumes and in articles.

Evangelia Georgitsoyanni

Evangelia Georgitsoyanni is a Professor in History of Art and Civilisation at the Harokopio University of Athens. She is a former Vice-rector of Academic Affairs and Personnel, and former Dean of the School of Environment, Geography and Applied Economics at the Harokopio University, as well as a former Vice President of the General State Archives of Greece. She holds a Bachelor of History and Archaeology degree from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and an MA and a PhD from the University of Paris I (Panthéon – Sorbonne). The cultural heritage of cemeteries is among her major research interests. She hosted and organised, on behalf of Harokopio University of Athens, the Conference of the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe (Athens, 2017). She is also the editor of the volume Ancient Greek Art and European Funerary Art, (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2019).