“You'll go home with bruises”: Affect, embodiment and heritage on board HMS Belfast

Abstract

What happens when a naval vessel (in this case, HMS Belfast) is converted into a floating museum? This paper approaches this question with the concepts of assemblage and more‐than‐representational thought, in which the materialisation of the past is generative of a range of potentials that can shape encounters in the present. HMS Belfast is dedicated to conveying the specific history of the ship, as well as to providing a sense of what life on board was like for sailors. Long‐term (auto)ethnography of the ship was conducted in 2016–2017. Drawing from the mobilities paradigm and a nascent literature on the geography of ships, we focus on the spatial affects of orientation and disorientation that result from the interactions between the ship's materiality and the bodies of its visitors. The latter is part of the curators’ desired experience, along with the re‐training of visitors’ bodies to negotiate the material infrastructure of the ship, as many sailors reported disorientation on board. The former is deployed to heighten visitors’ experience of the ship's extremes, such as depths of the boiler room. Our findings extend the cultural geographic literature on embodied experience of heritage and also provide an innovative case study of mobility on board an immobilised ship.

Entangled Memories: Complicating the Memory of Area Bombing Through the Haunted Ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof

“…The approach draws specifically on literature that applies new materialist approaches to engage the sensorial nature of memory site-encounters of a researcher-visitor (Allen & Brown, 2011; Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Golańska, 2020; Micieli-Voutsinas & Cavicchi, 2019; Sumartojo, 2019; Waterton, 2014). For example, Dittmer and Waterton (2019) draw the bodily encounter of heritage to the fore in their analysis of the HMS Belfast, and Allen and Brown (2011) argue that it is “the body that makes the space for meaning-making and reflection possible through its capacity to affectively connect with other elements” (p. 314). Pushing beyond the sensory, new materialist approaches to memory draw on the bodily experiences of memory as part of an interaction with the similarly agentic matter of a place (Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Micieli-Voutsinas, 2017; Pastor & Kent, 2020).…”

“…For example, Dittmer and Waterton (2019) draw the bodily encounter of heritage to the fore in their analysis of the HMS Belfast, and Allen and Brown (2011) argue that it is “the body that makes the space for meaning-making and reflection possible through its capacity to affectively connect with other elements” (p. 314). Pushing beyond the sensory, new materialist approaches to memory draw on the bodily experiences of memory as part of an interaction with the similarly agentic matter of a place (Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Micieli-Voutsinas, 2017; Pastor & Kent, 2020). Meaning emerges, these scholars argue, from the interactions between the memory site’s materiality and the bodies of its visitors.…”

“…Meaning emerges, these scholars argue, from the interactions between the memory site’s materiality and the bodies of its visitors. Dittmer and Waterton (2019) approach remembering through places as a set of “material intensities [that] can be understood as vectors of force relations that (re)territorialise and (re)code both the [site] and the visitors’ subjectivities simultaneously, furthering the heritage sites’ aims of a potentially transformative visit” (p. 707). “Visitors, then, [are] brought into relation with something spatially and temporally multiple,” argue Dittmer and Waterton (2019, p. 717).…”

“…As well as the foundational feminist theory contributions of Haraway (1988, 2016) and Barad (2007, 2014) to new materialist philosophy, this article more specifically engages with the emerging new materialist perspectives of memory studies (Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Golańska, 2020; Waterton, 2014). Rather than moving “beyond” representational conventions and solely embracing the “more than human,” as many intersections of heritage and new materialism do, this article draws on Golańska’s (2020) “collision approach” to see an encounter with Anhalter as inclusive of both representational and material elements of Anhalter.…”

Using ethnography and assemblage theory in political geography

“…In his ANT‐inspired ethnographic study of Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceyhan oil pipeline, Barry (2013: 1‐2) asserts that the force of this argument means that ‘no longer can we think of material artefacts and physical systems … as passive and stable foundations on which politics of states takes place … the unpredictable and lively behaviour of such objects and environments should be understood as integral to the conduct of politics’. While the built environment has become an important factor in assemblage ethnographies (Abourahme, 2015; Dittmer & Waterton, 2019; Miller, 2014), other ethnographers using assemblage‐inspired methods have focused on the agency of animals (Barau, 2014; Greenhough & Roe, 2019), mail (Davies, 2012) or campaign leaflets and posters (Page, 2019a; Page & Dittmer, 2015). For Pooya, these materials included food, passports, mobile phones, laptops, furniture, and so on.…”