ABSTRACT
Where does “the past” find its place and how is it kept in place? How does the social visibility of atrocity connect to its being spatially marked? What modes of repression, occlusion and denial operate through the process of memorialization? In the time after the TRC the stories of places and the places of stories have shaped public histories and commemorative practices in ways that mirror the discursive trajectories of the “new” nation’s imaginings. As certain narratives of place and emplaced narratives translate sites of memory into memorials and monuments, they call on the historicity of place through the meanings they evoke. They concretize sites of memory into perceivable (and materialized) objects of the historical imagination. Other sites of memory however become naturalized, fading into the daily lived environment and the private reminiscences of individuals who bear the memories that such places evoke. For many and often conflicting reasons, unmarked sites of memory, usually located within urban topographies, are made invisible to collective social and historical meaning making.
