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

Abstract

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.