ABSTRACT
“Reversing Perspectives: Urban Memory in Built and Literary Post-Industrial Cities” is the first of three chapters suggesting and performing a shift of attention: It attempts to apply the concepts outlined in the previous chapters – palimpsest, superposition, rhizome – first to physical sites in the polycentric post-industrial conurbation of the Ruhr region in Germany and only then to literary texts representing these sites in particular and the region generally. In doing so, it addresses the question of how concepts from literary urban studies can help understand the real-world city. Second, it argues that concepts of historical layering – usually applied to ‘old’ European cities such as Rome, Berlin, London, Paris or St. Petersburg – also fit post-industrial conurbations. The chapter proposes a distinction between the ‘palimpsest’ and Benjamin’s notion of ‘superposition’, which is here understood as an analytical concept rather than an involuntary perception. By doing justice to an observer’s knowledge, it allows for an understanding of what might be called a ‘remembered presence’, which, though it may have left no physical traces, may nonetheless be crucial to understanding the history and meanings of a site.
