Introduction: The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence

Abstract

Mass violence leaves behind a trail of destruction. Similar to people, things also fall victim to displacement and armed conflict. Possessions swap hands, get voluntarily or forcefully relinquished, exchanged for food and shelter, hidden away, entrusted to friends and neighbours for safekeeping, or brought along into forced exile. Objects find their way to mass graves too, in the pockets and bodily orifices of the killed, on the fingers and wrists of the dead. In times of war, things are also made in response to economic scarcity and deprivation. Produced from waste and debris, such objects come to serve as mementoes, reflecting prison or frontline experiences and attesting to the hardships of the time. In the aftermath of war and conflict, things are often rescued by survivors or the families of victims, inherited, retrieved by forensic experts, or looted from war graves. The surviving thing is mobilized in art practices and storytelling, displayed in museums, or called forth to testify in judicial proceedings. Whether as trophies, souvenir, or evidence, things remain imbued with affect, permeated with memories (both actual and constructed), and burdened with conflicting narratives of the past. 1 This special issue investigates the role of objects in European histories and legacies of war, genocide and forced migration. Combining expertise in anthropology, forensic archaeology, cultural geography, history, and cultural and memory studies, the articles explore how rescued, looted, misappropriated, abandoned, found and recovered things live on in the aftermath of mass violence. Based on a broad range of cases and geographical contexts, from Spain to France, Italy to Poland, this issue looks at material, symbolic and political practices around surviving things and traces their trajectories in post-conflict settings. The authors show that personal objects are endowed with various qualities

Contemporary archaeology in conflict zones: The materiality of violence and the transformation of the urban space in Temuco, Chile during the social outburst

“…The need to record the materialization of violence has grown strong lately and traditional methods from archaeology have proven exceptional to register these events and their material traces (Crossland, 2002;Hall, 2016;Leiton, 2009;Moshenska, 2008;Purbrick and Schofield, 2009). Objects related to violence and armed conflict, especially in its aftermath, and how they are permeated with memory have been discussed by Dziuban and Stan ́czyk (2020). Material culture has always been central in archaeology, and we can learn a great deal from applying archaeological methods to the study of materiality in our contemporary society (Buchli and Lucas, 2001;Graves-Brown et al, 2013;Harrison and Schofield, 2010;Rathje, 1979).…”

Making a home in the world: Clothes as mnemonic devices through which refugees experience home in flight and resettlement

“…Objects, such as Mahdi's t-shirt, carry the ‘traces of the travels and transformations they have undergone,’ embodying the past and carrying it ‘into the present’ (Dziuban and Stańczyk, 2020: 385). Through the marks, stains and tears, Mahdi can see and describe what he went through, where he had been and what effect this had on him.…”

The white-clad people: The white hanbok and Korean nationalism

“…The material death of the white hanbok, however, heightened its symbolic status. In the following three decades, as people rebuilt their lives from the ruins of war and moved towards economic stability and democracy, the white hanbok became the site of ‘emotional and imaginative investment, taking centre stage in post-conflict narratives and memory performances’ (Dziuban and Stańczyk, 2020: 386). For some, the image of a clean and crisp white hanbok represented the idealised pre-colonial Korea; for some, the mud- or blood-stained surface was a symbol of minjok and nationalism; for others who could not lift the veil of colonial rhetoric, it was a source of shame and the proof of inferiority.…”