ABSTRACT
Inherited monuments, architectures, and urban plans constitute the built “debris of imperial memory” that litters the globe. In many cases extant colonial-era landmarks of memory are active contributors to neocolonialist processes, but in other contexts their sustained presence — also ultimately a choice — betrays a colonial amnesia that permits the avoidance of direct confrontation with darker histories. Historic structures of the colonial-era play roles in the lives of postcolonial states, individuals, and societies, not just as sites of memory passively present or subtly influential, but often as actively engaged and exploited spaces that one might call “neocolonialist sites of memory.” Neocolonialsim can exist in very real, structural, or institutionalized forms, but it can also exist in appearances alone. It can boom and it can echo, reverberating across time and space through inherited colonial-era built environments. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
