Placing and tracing absence: A material culture of the immaterial

Abstract

International audienceThis essay engages with recent work on an unusual, yet fascinating theme: absence. Two edited collections have recently been published that deal with the topic: An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss (Bille et al., 2010) and The Matter of Death: Space, Place and Materiality (Hockey et al., 2010). These books explore an almost counterintuitive aspect of absence: its material culture. Indeed, absence has a materiality and exists in - and has effects on - the spaces people inhabit and their daily practices and experiences. Drawing on the discussions in these two books and on other recent developments in the study of absence, this essay considers the relational ontology of absence, conceiving absence not as a thing in itself but as something that exists through relations that give absence matter. Absence, in this view, is something performed, textured and materialized through relations and processes, and via objects. We therefore need to trace absence. This entails following and describing the processes through which absence becomes matter and absence comes to matter. It means to map out, locate and follow the traces of absence and understand absences as traces, that is, as residual, incomplete, elusive, ambiguous, yet material entities

Roadside memorials in the Czech Republic and Romania: memory versus religion in two European post-communist countries

“…In terms of reminding the public of sudden and tragic death, they can also be seen as places of absence (Meyer, 2012) or, paraphrasing Nora, as lieux d'absence. Nevertheless, while 'the cemetery is an institutionalised place for memorialising absence' (Meyer, 2012, p. 106), roadside memorials have a pronounced personal character, allowing more freedom with regard to the expression of grief.…”

Consumption, ageing and identity: New Zealander's narratives of gifting, ridding and passing on

“…Meyer (2012) argued that absence is not a thing in itself but is created through relations that give ‘absence matter’; it has a kind of ambiguous materiality that has agentic effects on everyday life. Thus, disposal can be seen as performative, with both the practice of disposing of things and their absent presence in the lives of the person moving them along becoming a means of settling, accounting for, reconciling or maintaining forms of social relations.…”

“…Dowling & Power 2011 on how inherited objects may help achieve ‘homeyness’). Much more needs to be asked about the intentionality, transience or lasting of such effects and affects, and on how ‘absence is (to be) “placed” and “traced” ’ (Meyer 2012, p. 108). All of the participants were parents of adult children so it is perhaps not surprising that familial and generational connections were reinforced in narratives of gifting, disposal and passing on as legacy.…”

Yearnings for Guácharo Cave: affect, absence, and science in Venezuelan speleology

“…This view follows scholars who have argued for the need to understand absence as presence. 16 Specifically, Avril Maddrell's analysis of how 'material memorialscapes' come into being through processes of remembrance informs my work. 17 Also important is Ben Anderson's call for an exploration of the 'taking-place of hope, its mode of operation'.…”