ABSTRACT
Material remnants of the past, according to Till (2005: 7), ‘haunt our imaginations and performances by materializing social relations’. e physical remnants of conflict haunt many contemporary societies, evoking the saliency of past hurts and divisions in the present. ere are those, as Till suggests, who feel the need to be haunted by the past: to return there; to re-enact their experiences; to sanctify a place to remember; for what is potentially visible, as Lowenthal (1985: 238) reminds us, is omnipresent. ere are others, however, who wish to forget and exorcise painful memories from the present. Goodfellow (2002) suggests that there are always silences and absences within narratives of memory. Silence is often necessary, particularly within political cultures in which certain groups work to banish hauntings or dark memories into the realm of the taboo (Schreiner 2002: 57). e word ‘taboo’ can be understood to constitute something too painful or shameful to discuss (or remember), something which is hidden or banned from the public, often for their own protection (Rudas, cited in Schreiner 2002: 57). Physically obliterating sites of painful memories from the landscapes of the present can, for many, be psychologically liberating. Yet attempts to forget or deny the past may also prove futile. Many academics have argued that to forget, one must first remember (Edkins 2003). Roth (1995: 5), for example, writing about trauma, suggests that memories of the event that occasioned the trauma only disappear whenever they become part of the historical consciousness. Referring explicitly to acts of preservation or commemoration, Schreiner (2002: 63) notes that: ‘what never has been inscribed also may never be forgotten, because it is not accessible to forgetfulness’. Acknowledging and demarcating the past can then arguably serve to alleviate the ‘burden of memory’ (Assman, cited in Schreiner 2002: 64).
