Connor The Political Afterlife of Sites of Monumental Destruction

Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-317-35368-3
Verlag: CRC Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

Reihe: Interventions

What happens when a monumental thing is physically destroyed? Is its "life" as a socially significant, presencing thing at an end? Or might the process of destruction work to enhance its symbolic force, mediating work and presencing power? In this book Andrea Connor traces the ‘afterlife’ of two exemplary examples of monumental destruction and their re-investment with cultural value and symbolic significance.

In 1993, during the Bosnian war, the Mostar Bridge was completely destroyed. Reconstructed in 2004, as an exact copy of the original, this "new Old Bridge" has assumed an afterlife as an intentional monument to reconciliation. The World Trade Centre, in New York, has also been transformed since its destruction in 2001, as a place of national mourning and remembrance, a symbolic void marking a singular act of terrorism. Using recent work on affect and object agency Connor considers their contested reconfiguration as sites of collective remembering and forgetting in new highly charged political contexts. She argues for a more expansive notion of reconstruction – encompassing not only the material and symbolic afterlife of both things but also their affecting afterlives as they are re-assembled in the present.

Provoking a reconsideration of the way monuments and heritage sites, even in their absence, become powerful agents of historical narrativization, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields including international relations, cultural studies, critical heritage studies, and material culture studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Connor, Andrea

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface Monumental Affect

Chapter 1 Affecting Presence: Memory, Agency and the Power of Monumental Things

Chapter 2 Urbicide and the Destruction of "Bridge-ness" in Mostar

Chapter 3 Afterlife: Anchoring Affect/Reconstructing "Bridge-ness" In Mostar

Chapter 4 Skyscraper Dreaming: Monumentality, Modernity and The Destruction the Twin Towers

Chapter 5 Filling the Void: Embodying the Uncanny Space of Ground Zero.

Chapter 6 Faith in Steel: Authenticity, Steel Beams and the Fragmented Afterlife of the Twin Towers

Conclusion Affecting Afterlives

List of references

Über Autor(innen)

Andrea Connor teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney and works at the City of Sydney, Australia.