Space and the memories of violence: landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception

In: Palgrave Macmillan memory studies

Abstract

This volume offers a variety of perspectives on the relation between violence, memory and space. Focusing on enforced disappearances and genocide as violent practices aimed at destroying and erasing the traces of the 'enemy', the contributions gathered inquire about the manifold spatial strategies of domination and violence, but also about the powers of memory, resistance and transformation. The originality and core contribution of this book lies in the dialogue it establishes between memory studies, on the one hand, and critical studies of space on the other. The bridging of these academic fields opens up a fertile and, to a large extent, unexplored research area. The volume brings together young academics and prominent international scholars from a variety of disciplinary fields, including Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Philosophy, Literature, Cultural Studies, Architecture and Theatre Studies. The authors engage with the spatial deployment of past and present violence in Argentina, Cambodia, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the United States. The chapters include original contributions by renowned authors Aleida Assmann and Jay Winter, transcripts of an interview with the eminent geographer David Harvey and fragments of the play The Cartographer. Warsaw, 1:400,000, by the acclaimed Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga, in its first English translation.