MEMORIES AGAINST FIRES MEMORIAS CONTRA INCENDIOS

The Sheffield Student Journal of Sociology, 2017

The role of memory in disaster-prone places is essential to face disaster events, which, in time, can also shape city-making. Communities that live in disaster-prone places tend to react from instincts passed down through generations, rather than acting per protocols or planning by a centralised administrative organisation. This is evidenced not only in communal behaviours in the wake and aftermath of an event, but is also tangible in urban infrastructure, where its construction responds to a very local sense of belonging and attachment. Thus, I argue that communal knowledge construction in disaster-prone places relies on memory of a trans-generational origin, where memory is re-signified from event to event, empowering present communities to thrive in the face of disaster. Moreover, I propose that memory is a core aspect in city-making for these communities and in the construction of place, in behavioural and urban facets. This paper is a product of subjective analysis applied to Valparaiso, a coastal city of Chile, and its major disaster events of 1866, 1906 and 2014. I designed data collection to gather impressions, reactions and life experiences of affected communities through interviews and archival work related to historic disasters. During fieldwork, my main questions regarded memory and city-making as important aspects to face historic disaster events. Data analysis was organised by emerging issues that participants regarded as most relevant explanations for disaster experiences, applying intersubjective interpretation to their narratives. From this research, I aim to position qualitative methods, as a diverse analytical tool, equal in importance to traditional quantitative frameworks of disaster studies. Although this research is a single case study, the identification of memory a an essential part of disaster understanding can help to improve preparation and readiness protocols in disaster-prone places. Keywords: memory, disaster, communal knowledge, communal narratives, citymaking

Fanta Castro, Andrea/Herrero-Olaizola, Alejandro/Rutter-Jensen, Chloe (eds.). Territories of Conflict: Traversing Colombia Through Cultural Studies. New York & Suffolk: University of Rochester Press, Boydell & Brewer, 2017

Full text chapter available at: https://books.google.com.co/books?id=pXZgDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&hl=es&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

The aim of this paper is to show how the paradigm of disaster resilience may help reorienting urban planning policies in order to mitigate various types of risks, thanks to carefully thought action on heritage and conservation practices. Resilience is defined as the “capacity of a social system to proactively adapt to and recover from disturbances that are perceived within the system to fall outside the range of normal and expected disturbances .” It relies greatly on risk perception and the memory of catastrophes. States, regions, municipalities, have been giving territorial materiality to collective memory for centuries , but this trend has considerably increased in the second half of the 20th century . This is particularly true regarding the memory of disasters: for example, important traces of catastrophes such as urban ruins have been preserved, because they were supposed to maintain some awareness and hence foster urban resilience – Berlin’s Gedächtniskirche is a well-known example of this policy . Yet, in spite of preserved traces of catastrophes and various warnings and heritage policies, there are countless examples of risk mismanagement and urban tragedies. Using resilience as a guiding concept might change the results of these failed risk mitigation policies and irrelevant disaster memory processes. Indeed, the concept of resilience deals with the complexity of temporal and spatial scales, and with partly emotional and qualitative processes, so that this approach fits the issues of urban memory management. Resilience might help underlining the complexity and the subtlety of remembrance messages, and lead to alternative paths better adapted to the diversity of risks, places and actors. However, when it is given territorial materiality, memory is almost always symbolically and politically framed and interpreted; Vale and Campanella had already outlined this political aspect of remembrance and resilience as a discourse . Resilience and the territorialization of memory are not ideologically neutral, but urban risk mitigation may come at that price.

This essay examines the concept and the discourse of collective memory in view of interpreting the novel function with which it has been endowed in recent decades and the problematic character of its interpretation. To this end, it focuses on the recent book by Manuel Cruz, "On the Difficulty of Living Together: Memory, Politics, and History", which examines the contemporary functions that collective memory has assumed in recent decades and takes into account interpretations of it elaborated in a number of seminal works that have set the framework for contemporary ways of understanding it. My investigation engages critical analysis of the psychological approach to collective memory that Cruz adopts, which, in interpreting recent public preoccupation with collective memory as an expression of trauma occasioned by the Holocaust and other horrific twentieth-century events, assumes that analogous psychic mechanisms govern forms of remembrance in the public sphere and memory in personal and small-group interaction. By taking into account alternate possibilities of interpretation, suggested above all by the public function of the mass media, I seek to widen the scope of inquiry to scrutinize in a broader perspective the contemporary role of collective memory and its political significance in the public realm.

A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, 2010

Seismopolite, 2016

In the wake of severe economic and social crisis in 2001, Argentina became known as a hotspot of self-managed artistic initiatives, a hunting ground for the world's curators. Today, this tradition of collaborative artistic activity endures, but with different coordinates reflecting an economy that has doubled in size and a more democratic society in which the contours of social conflict have changed. In December 2013, over the course of a long day of heated debate, ‘Multiplicity III’, 16 groups of artists active since 2006 reflected on their fluctuating experiences and on the convictions informing their work at the Center for Artistic Research (CIA).2 This encounter took place a decade after the first ‘Multiplicity’ workshop, which brought together the activists of the new millennium in the now legendary space Tatlín,3 allowing for the identification of significant developments in this type of collective practice, a now well- established tradition of Argentine art. This evolution was also highlighted by comparative analysis of the records of the 2002-2003 Multiplicity workshop, (published in the journal ramona 33), those from 2007, (in ramona 69), and the discussions of contemporary collaborative activities which appeared in a recent special edition of the CIA Review 3.4 The organisation of the 2013 encounter around a series of guideline questions, to which seven other groups responded by e –mail, further amplified the echo of previous workshops (held in 2002, 2003 and 2006). Nearly all of the most influential groups established in the streets and assemblies of the 2001 crisis, are now established as references of contemporary art. The invitations to the 2002-2003 workshop helped the participating groups to recognize common elements in their work and to learn from each other. They also influenced the thinking of the writers, theorists and historians who documented these groups in books and articles. This essay aims to shed further light on these collective practices, one of the best Argentine customs, as a kind of epilogue to this work.

Nederduitse Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrif, 2011

Memory is central in dealing with and being liberated from the trauma of the past. Individuals, families, communities and nations have struggled through the centuries to face and deal with their memories in a constructive way. Memory is thus indispensable for living in the present and hoping for a reconciled future if people to reconcile with God, with those closest to them, with others and with themselves. This article argues that memory is a key element within the healing and reconciliation process for victims and perpetrators. To reach this goal the significance and content of memory need to be ascertained and understood.

International Sociology, 2009

... a que las historias son generalmente escritas por los vencedores, no es sólo psicoanalítico sino también lo aborda una nueva generación de científicos sociales quienes, posteriormente a las Guerras Mundiales, el Holocausto, y también la Nakba Palestina, han estudiando ...

Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2016

El Concurso Público Internacional de Anteproyecto Arquitectónico para el diseño del Museo Nacional de la Memoria, proyecto del Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, logró reunir en 2015 a más de 700 profesionales de la arquitectura y del urbanismo para crear, junto con las iniciativas de memoria de las víctimas de diferentes regiones del país, un nuevo espacio para dignificar, dialogar y no olvidar. La memoria edifica nuevos escenarios para la paz.