Salecl R.: The State as a Work of Art: The Trauma of Ceausescu´s Disneyland. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 1/1996/1, p.91-104.
Charles post from the PWW, made me look for citations on what has been called, "Stalin Gothic," (no premature postmodernism there, when I traveled through the GDR and Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1979, I saw lotsa "Grand Meta-Narratives" symbolized in the architecture and murals. I seem to remember a piece after Ceausescu fell, by either Vladmir Tismaneau or Andrei Codrescu on the monstrously huge monument to the Leader's Ego in the pages of the NY Review of Books. Also the exiled Iraqi dissident, Samir al-Khalil (ex-Trotskyist, author of ," Republic of Fear, "" on the Iraqi Baath Party and Saddam Hussein-Samir al-Khalil, http://www.criticalreview.com/lf/Special/books.9104.html REPUBLIC OF FEAR: THE POLITICS OF MODERN IRAQ (University of California Press, 1989). "[The reissue of] this book has been on the bestseller list for obvious reasons," says Munson. "But it really is rather an interesting and literate account of the Ba'ath Party and the way Saddam Hussein has used terror to maintain authority in Iraq, although in my opinion it focuses a little too much on the official texts of the party), has some interesting work on Iraqi monuments, as well.
The Monument : Art, Vulgarity, and Responsibility in Iraq by Kanan Makiya, Samir Al-Khalil. The chapters I read of this by the same author were good as well. Cruelty and Silence : War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World by Kanan Makiya.
Michael Pugliese