This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Trigg, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

The place of trauma: Memory, hauntings, and the temporality of ruins

University of Sussex, UK, d.j.trigg{at}sussex.ac.uk

Implicit in theoretical treatments of the memory of trauma is the fragmented reception of the past. While a great deal of research has approached this issue from the perspective of oral testimony, what has remained underdeveloped is the role sites of memory play in contributing to our understanding of trauma. Accordingly, in this article, I intend make a foray into this convergence between place and trauma through undertaking a phenomenological investigation of the testimonial attributes of ruins. In doing so, I will pursue two central questions. First, insofar as the built environment is able to contain memory, how does the place of trauma testify to history? Second, if ruins are by their nature contingent and dynamic, how can the past be spatially preserved without creating a false unity between time and the event? In response to these questions, I will put forward the notion that sites of trauma articulate memory precisely through refusing a continuous temporal narrative. My conclusion is that the appearance of the ruin, understood phenomenologically, allows us to approach the spatio-temporality of trauma in terms of a logic of hauntings and voids.

Key Words: embodiment • Holocaust • materiality • nightmares • phenomenology

References

• Agamben, Giorgio (1999) Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. New York: Zone Books.
• Bachelard, Gaston (1996) The Poetics of Space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Caruth, Cathy (1996) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University.
• Casey, Edward (1997) The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press.
• Foote, Kenneth (2003) Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. Texas University of Texas Press.
• Ginsberg, Robert (2004) The Aesthetics of Ruins. New York: Rodopi.
• Huyssen, Andreas (2003) Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Langer, Lawrence (1991) Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Langer, Lawrence (1995) Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lanzmann, Claude (1985) Shoah (DVD). London: Eureka Entertainment.
• Levi, Primo (1996) Survival in Auschwitz. New York and London: Touchstone.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2006) Phenomenology of Perception. London and New York: Routledge.
• Sebald, Winfred Georg (2002) After Nature. Harmondsworth: London.
• Till, Karen (2005) The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
• Trigg, Dylan (2006) The Aesthetics of Decay: Nothingness, Nostalgia, and the Absence of Reason. New York: Peter Lang.
• Virilio, Paul (2004) The Paul Virilio Reader, Steve Redhead (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Memory Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 87-101 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1750698008097397


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Trigg, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?