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March 9th, 2006
11:15 am - Iconography
On my way into work this morning, I found out that Venezuela is changing its coat of arms and flag. There will be another star on the flag (for Bolivar), and a machete, a bow and arrow, and tropical fruits and flowers will be added to the coat of arms to represent Venezuelan peasants and indigenous peoples.
Most interesting to me, Chavez and his allies in the Venezuelan parliament have pushed for the "imperialist" horse on the coat of arms to point to the left, rather than the right. Reuters has a piece which quotes lawmaker Cilia Flores as saying, "The horse now faces left with its head forward to the future, a white, free, untamed horse, as our nation is free as never before."
The obvious implications are the more modern associations of "right" with "conservative" and "left" with "liberal." Or rather, as Chavez would doubtless couch it, fascist and communist, respectively. Historically, of course, "left" (as a direction) has been associated with forces of darkness, including the Devil. Wikipedia tells me, perhaps incorrectly, that "left" comes from the Old English "lyft," meaning "weak," and the Latinate "sinister," brought over into heraldic parlance, bears out the evil connotations of the direction.
...which is nothing more than me thinking out loud about the fact that meanings shift with time, and iconographic associations can be and are co-opted by regimes for their own political ends. It is fascinating, however, when something as steeped in tradition as heraldry smashes into modern politics to cause this sort of cognitive dissonance.
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Comments:
to go along with the thoughts of the shifting of meaning, liberalism is another one of those terms that has changed drastically in our usage. Putting a modern liberal and a classical liberal in a room together and you'd have as violent of a fight as you would with a red sox and a yankee fan at a bar watching the ALCS. Just another shifting that I thought of, especially in context that you brought up liberalism in your post
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/8152544/1432886) | | From: | ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kniedzw |
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| Date: | March 9th, 2006 05:49 pm (UTC) |
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Oh. Very true. That's why I made the comment about how Chavez might characterize them. Shifting symbologies are kinda cool.
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/27620801/6534184) | | From: | unforth |
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| Date: | March 9th, 2006 05:53 pm (UTC) |
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Shifting symbols are cool, but they so problematic! I find them difficult as a historian, because you have to learn not just what the symbol means now, but what it used to mean, and how those differ, or else you'll misinterpret everything you read. :)
It also seems weird that *left* is looking towards the future, although that could be a Latin/South American thing. But you'd think in a culture that reads left to right, the future would be towards the right. (Although i'm making that judgement coming from a fairly literate society...hmm.)
Anyway, in Mexico outside one of the palaces, there's a statue that used to face north, but after the US pissed them off they turned it around so that it's got its back to the States.
(God, that was kind of a lame anecdote, considering i can't remember, um, *ANY* of the details. Anyway, you get the point.) |
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