ABSTRACT
The traces of the violences of war across history can be found in all societies. Sometimes those traces are concrete and deliberately maintained (for example, Oradour sur Glane in France); sometimes their presence is concrete but neglected (for example, the rural town of Belchite in Spain); sometimes their presence is stark (as in the rows of white tombstones or grey crosses across Northern France and Belgium); and sometimes they take the form of the war memorials found in many places across the world. More recent practices would point to the importance of the Internet and social media as creating both official and unofficial spaces of remembrance (Martinsen, 2013). Whatever their shape or form, the legacy of war’s violences is there for all to see, for those who choose to look. Memorialisation to those dead, as a result of war, acts as a reminder to the living of the traces of these violences. Yet, embedded in these acts of memorialisation is a complex and ambiguous relationship between the state and the body. Fassin (2011: 288) suggests, ‘As their voices are silences, it is their bodies that speak’. In the context of war it is the bodies of the dead that speak, and memorials arguably act as shorthand for their voices. The power of these traces of war is obvious, embodied poignantly during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the military repatriations of the British war dead in the town of Royal Wootton Bassett. As one shop retailer from this town alludes to,
When you see the lipstick kisses – you can see all the lipstick kisses on the windows of the hearse and smear marks of someone’s tear-stained fingers down the window.
(Retailer, Royal Wootton Bassett, November 2012)