Afterlives of Violence: Contested Geographies of Past, Present and Future.

A one-day, interdisciplinary conference at the University of Brighton, 29th June 2017

10-5 in M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade – registration from 9

Organised by the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories and the Critical Studies Research Group

Keynote address from Berber Bevernage, Ghent University 

Traces of the past (including past futures) have the potential to unsettle linear understandings of time underpinning discourses that aim to draw a line between the past and the present. Such material legacies become subject to a complex articulation of contested regimes of visibility, readership and belonging that can also be explored in their material and spatial implications.

The aim of this postgraduate conference is to expand traditional understandings of the politics of memory and to highlight the relationship between spatiality and temporality. Important questions and areas of exploration involve, among others; how can we best approach, both methodologically and theoretically, spaces haunted by violent events? How can we best account for the multidirectional constellation of repetitions, anticipations and repressed returns in its geographical manifestations?

Topics to be covered might include:

Politics of time, chronopolitics

Spectral geographies, haunting and place

Ruins and processes of ruination

Contested geographies of memory, memoryscapes

Transitional justice and temporal difference

Landscapes of futurity, hope

Urban and rural memories

Politics of heritage and tourism

Time and postcolonial theory

Oral history and time

Time and the body

Landscapes of memorialisation

New materialist archaeologies

Geographies of absence/presence

Queer time(s)

Monuments and memorials

Rhythms of everyday life

Mnemohistory and space