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TIME, SPACE AND MOBILITY
IRF Press
edited by
Konstantinos D. Karatzas
IRF Press
Warsaw 2018
Copyright © 2018 by IRF Press
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Time, Space and Mobility

Edited by: Konstantinos D. Karatzas
ISBN 978-83-949577-1-1
IRF Press
Fundacja “Interdisciplinary Research Foundation”
Al. Jerozolimskie, 85/21
02-001 Warsaw, Poland
www.irf-network.org
info@irf-network.org
6
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................... 10
PART 1. MEMORY INTERPRETATIONS ......................................................................................... 13
Embodied Memory and World-View the Intertwining of Mankind and the Cosmos
Maria Saridaki .................................................................................................................................. 14
The Memory Space of the German Post-War Generation

Natalia Chodorowska ....................................................................................................................... 25
The Interpretive Reading of the Space in the Passage of Time

Annalucia D’Erchia ........................................................................................................................... 35
A Narrative of Displacement: The Collective Memory of Few Armenian Clans in Bulgaria

Georgeta Nazarska, Sevo Yavashchev.............................................................................................. 43
Space Bounded Memory: Palace or Theatre

Saime Gümüştaş, Hande Asar .......................................................................................................... 55
Law, Justice, Time: A Critique of Transitional Justice from Walter Benjamin’s Politics of Time
Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa ................................................................................................................. 65
PART 2. A JOURNEY IN LITERATURE: EXPLORING MEMORY, SPACE AND TIME ................. 72
Geographies of Transition in Post-Communist Romanian Literature: Borders, Heterotopias,

Dystopiasa Journey in Literature: Exploring Memory, Space and Time
Marius Conkan .................................................................................................................................. 73
Racial Melancholia and Poetics of (Im)mobility in Dinaw Mengestu’s

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Hatice Bay ......................................................................................................................................... 83
The Practicalities of ‘Mapping’ Literature: The Limited/Limiting Space of Portugal

in the Novels of Valter Hugo Mãe
Anneliese Hatton ...............................................................................................................................89
Driving Forces in Literature: Effects of Fusion with the Historical Determinism

Magdalena Brodziak ......................................................................................................................... 97
Spatial Perception of Rural Pockets and Healthy Urban Regeneration

Marta Bujanda Miguel .................................................................................................................... 103
The Time of the Walk – Using Paul Celan’s Poem Todtnauberg as a Field Guide to Walking the
Heidegger Rundweg at Todtnauberg
Mark Riley ........................................................................................................................................ 113
7
Highs and Lows Make You Feel That Things Matter – Orientational and Ontological Metaphors in
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Wioletta Chabko .............................................................................................................................. 123
Temporal Dynamics and Spatial Horizons in Alejandro Morales’ Novel

The Rag Doll Plagues (1992)
Sophia Emmanouilidou ................................................................................................................... 133
PART 3. SPACES AND BUILDINGS WITH VIVID MEMORY ....................................................... 142
Designing an (Urban) Interior Space of Commemoration: A Referred Studio

Melahat Kucukarslan Emiroglu ..................................................................................................... 143
The Role of Temporal and Permanent Urban Spaces in Creating the Urban Identity
Hasti Khalili, Mohamad Zakeri ...................................................................................................... 185
The Architecture of the 19th Century Military Buildings

İlke Aytar ........................................................................................................................................ 200
Views on Sustainability in Built Environment Undergoing Fast Urbanization Processes

Melek Elif Somer.............................................................................................................................. 215
Reconfiguring the Lifeworld: Spatial Experience in the Universe of Technical Images

Andrew Chesher .............................................................................................................................. 229
Space/Geography and Time/History in Paul Auster’s Moon Palace: A Heterotopological

Exploration
Hatice Bay ....................................................................................................................................... 237
“Time Has No Meaning, Space and Place Have No Meaning, on This Journey”: Time and Space in
Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry
Malgorzata Wronka ........................................................................................................................ 245
Reading the ‘Summer Palace Culture’ in Three Interior Item: A Research Study from İstanbul
Merve Karaoğlu............................................................................................................................... 252
8
9
INTRODUCTION
IRF Press, committed to interdisciplinary research, presents a collection exploring
new perspectives in knowledge. This volume contributes valuable insights to the daedalic
world of historical analysis; it elucidates time, conceptualizes space, and explores mobility
in an effort to shed light upon and interweave these three complex paths of scholarship.
Political culture, national and individual identities, collective and personal memory, spatial
exploitation, memory formation and even exploitation along with presentation of historical
truth are several of the issues explored in this collection. Time, mobility, and space are
interwoven and analyzed clearly in various case studies; this fascinating kaleidoscope will
provide momentum for further contemplation.
In the first part, Maria Saridaki provides an additional interpretation on the
coexistence of memory and space, time and identity while she explores the power of
architecture and its effect on people’s lives in the chapter “Embodied memory and world-
view: the intertwining of mankind and the cosmos.”
Next Natalia Chodorowska discusses the interpretation of memory and space in the
work of German writer Tanja Dückers. In the chapter “The Memory of Space of the German
post-war generation,” she gives insights into the fragile identity, individual and collective, of
the post-World War II generation.
"Annalucia D'Erchia takes the reader to the Cathedral of Syracuse where she explores
the architecture and links it with both collective and individual memory, in her chapter, "The
interpretive reading of the space in the passage of time.”
Georgeta Nazarska and Sevo Yavashchev in their chapter “A narrative of
Displacement: The Collective Memory of Few Armenian Clans in Bulgaria” examine a 1989
unpublished manuscript by Bulgarian author M. Melkovnan and underline the significance
of oral history in shaping memory and identity. These fragments of Balkan and Ottoman
history add an extra layer of value to the collection.
Hande Asar and Saime Gümüştaş interpret Sherlock Holmes’ TV series and Simon
Critchley’s Memory Theatre in their chapter “Space Bounded Memory: Palace or Theatre”.
They examine memory and space as tangible and abstract values offering a multilayered
approach.
In the chapter entitled “Law, Justice, Time: A Critique of Transitional Justice from
Walter Benjamin’s Politics of Time”, Alexis Alvarez Nakagawa analyzes justice and explores
its temporality and unique connection with time. The author examines similar concepts
presented by philosopher Walter Benjamin and argues about time’s effect on justice and that
ways that the latter has been imposed in different eras.
The second part begins with Marius Conkan’s fresh approach introduces us to post-
communist Romanian literature and draws a map that links poetry with memory, identity,
space and time in his well-presented “Geographies of Transition in Post-Communist
Romanian Literature: Borders, Heterotopias, Dystopias.”
The core of the chapter “Racial Melancholia and Poetics of (Im)mobility in Dinaw
Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears” by Hatice Bay is Mengestu’s novel
where she has an interesting approach on a complex topic such as racial melancholia and
the American dream more generally.
Portuguese writer Valterl Hugo Mãe is the core of Anneliese Hatton’s chapter “The
Practicalities of ‘Mapping Literature’: The Limited/Limiting space of Portugal,” where she
10
explores the impact of literature on shaping memory, knowledge, and ultimately, individual
and collective identity.
Magdalena Brodziak, in “Driving forces in literature: Effects of fusion with historical
determinism,” interprets the driving forces that act upon writers not only in working on a
story but also the ways they approach it. A comparative study that shows how the fluidity of
time leads to multiple dynamics through which writers contemplate and conceptualize their
stories.
In “Spatial Perception of Rural Pockets and Healthy Urban Regeneration” the locale
is set in Ljubljana where Marta Bujanda Miguel examines how space has been transformed
in post-industrial cities; and the symbiosis of rural and urban pockets which play an active
role in the formation of people’s identity.
Mark Riley, in his “The Time of the Walk – Using Paul Celan’s Poem Todtnauberg as
a Field Guide to Walking the Heidegger Rundweg at Todtnauberg” takes us to Germany. He
proposes a new approach to understanding time and space and their unbreakable
connection with our memory and identity.
“Highs and Lows Make You Feel that Things Matter – orientational and ontological
metaphors in Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’” by Wioletta
Chabko explores the importance of spatiality in shaping people’s identity and character
along with the unique role of language in communicating messages and ideas.
The chapter “Temporal Dynamics and Spatial Horizons”, by Sophia Emmanoulidou,
examines Alejandro Morales’ 1992 novel The Rag Doll Plagues; who travels us to the
notional area between Mexico and the United States and the life of three Hispanic doctors.
Her analysis reveals a multilayered world of prejudice, environment, politics, and culture
inextricably bound together.
The last part of our collection is introduced by Melahat Kucukarslan Emiroglu. In
“Designing an (Urban) Interior Space of Commemoration: A Referred Studio” the author
conceptualizes memory and connects it with commemoration and urban topography
offering a study on their impact on individual and collective identity though the examination
of the use of space.
Hasti Khalili and Mohamad Zakeri in “The Role of Temporal and Permanent Urban
Spaces in Creating Urban Identity” work on the interactive relationship between space and
identity and the ways that urban identity develops a sense of locality and uniqueness, forms
cultures, and affects the character and overall identity of citizens.
İlke Aytar also focuses on design and constructions in the chapter entitled “The
Architecture of Nineteenth Century Military Buildings” where he identifies and analyzes
architectural activity under Sultan Abdulaziz and its impact in the modernization of the
Ottoman Empire.
Architecture is the center of “Views on Sustainability in Built Environments
Undergoing Fast Urbanization Processes” by Melek Elif Somer. She analyzes the role of new
technologies, innovative and obsolete architectural approaches, and how these define life
and affect people.
In the chapter “Reconfiguring the Lifeworld: Spatial Experience in the Universe of
Technical Images, Andrew Chesher connects photography with the perception of life
experiences and activities that have a unique role in augmenting, subtracting, transforming,
or manipulating memory and identity.
11
The next chapter is a trip to Paul Auster’s Moon Palace where Hatice Bay introduces
the readers to the heterotopological perception of the use of space in the formation of
identity and the understanding of reality.
In the chapter “Time has no meaning, space and place have no meaning, on this
journey”: Time and Space in Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry”, Malgorzate Wronka
offers an alternative approach and examines Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry and
identifies the connections between time and space and how these affected Winterson and
her writings.
Finally, Merve Karaoglus’ chapter “Reading the ‘Summer Palace Culture’ in Three
Interior Items: A Research Study from Istanbul” presents fragments of Istanbul’s unique
centenarian history through the examination of artifacts at the famous Ihlamur Summer
Palace. This approach offers insight on how historical, political, and sociological conditions
shaped architecture and people’s identity.
Konstantinos D. Karatzas
12
PART 1
MEMORY INTERPRETATIONS
13
EMBODIED MEMORY AND WORLD-VIEW THE INTERTWINING OF MANKIND AND
THE COSMOS
Maria Saridaki
Origins: The b o u n d a r y, beyond a physical interpretation – Seeking the o t h e r
Born in Crete, I believe I share the passion and subconscious curiosity of its people to
seek the other. I have felt the mystery and attraction of the sea, the pull of the unknown. The
concept of boundary has been a driving force in my thinking ever since I stumbled upon it
during my diploma year while developing a project of my hometown of Heraklion and its
complex urban situation. I was intrigued by the apparent loss of meaning of my hometown’s
Venetian fortification and how its enormous footprint seemed all but invisible from the city’s
reality. In my doctorate thesis, the concept of b o u n d a r y was revealed as more than a
physical edge, or barrier, but as “a primary ontological force that drives, provokes and
defines our thinking, consciously and subconsciously, in our attempt to achieve an
understanding of self within the cosmos.” (Saridaki 2012: ) The linguistic definitions of b o
u n d a r y both in Greek and in English complemented each other and provided an invaluable
insight in the unravelling of the concept. (Ganiatsas 1994) In the boundary, I discerned an
invitation to opposition, an invitation to experience, leading to transformation.
Όριον (orion) ~boundary
Ορίζω (orizo) ~ to bind / divide / separate
confine / define / order /specify / distinguish
Ορισμός (orismos) ~ Definition
Όρος (oros) ~ Term, Mountain
Ορίζων (orizon) ~ Horizon
14
Part 1 Maria Saridaki Embodied Memory…
Conceptual models of revitalising boundaries at the Venetian fortress of Heraklion, Crete.

(MArch, Saridaki 1998)
Challenging its primarily physical interpretation, I have been driven in my research

by the concept of b o u n d a r y, from its revealed genesis, imbedded in the primary moment
of the birth of human consciousness within the universe, following it along its progressive
complexity. My research, as a whole, reflects the inherent necessity for a dialectic, creative
opposition between man and the cosmos in order to achieve an understanding of self.
Schematic representation of boundary concept.
Myth, religion, language, culture, philosophy, science, and even architecture are
manifestations of humanity’s gradual attempt to understand, adapt to and
transform our world and ourselves within it and in reference to it, displaying an
inherent dynamic between our mind and our world. (Saridaki 2012: ii)
World-view as a container of knowledge
One of humanity’s first collective expressions was the development of creation

mythology. In practically every known culture we find an attempt at an explanation of the
origin of life in the surrounding cosmos. Creation mythology is founded as the core of early
cosmology. Early man built his world-view around it. As the ‘view of all life’, a world-view is
intended to provide a comprehensive interpretation or image of the universe and humanity
in it. These early creative humans, though, produced this unconsciously. Regardless of their
geographical positioning in the world, they were driven to formulate an answer to the most
enduring questions of all: where did we come from and what is our purpose. The answers
are as variable as the cultures that created them, but at their centre, the binding message is
the motivation to belong.
Even in modern times, there are cultures in which myth is still a living thing, a
supreme truth that represents the reality of that culture. An extraordinary example of this
deep-rooted consciousness is also probably the earliest of creation myths, the so-called
“Dreamtime” or “Dreaming” of the Indigenous Australians. Their cosmological /
cosmogonic system is lived to this day and it involves the landscape and its population as a
whole. "Aboriginal people believe that their Spiritual Ancestors have given social relevance
to the landscape, imbuing it with their power and humanising it." (Clarke 2003: 15) In their
15
cosmogonic model the Spiritual Ancestors created their environment through a series of
heroic acts. These beings possess all human traits, vices as well as virtues and pleasures.
Their substance is also multifaceted. They take the form of humans, animals or birds, but
can also be conceived as atmospheric and cosmological phenomena. The “Dreaming” is an
exceptional example of creation myths as it is still used today as a way of life, engaging the
circle of time in its totality including past present and future. “The Dreaming mythology
provides Aboriginal people with answers to the great universal religious questions of
humankind, concerning the origin, meaning, purpose and destiny of life.” (ibid. 16)
To Aboriginal people a part of the legacy of the Dreaming Ancestors is in the

landscape, and their association with the land is marked by sacred memorials or
‘sacred sites’. As the Ancestors travelled across the landscape, they left behind a trail
that can be recognised by Aboriginal people in the form of mountains, waterholes,
plant formations and other environmental and geographical phenomena. (ibid. 18)
The existence of these places in the environment, help the Indigenous Australians see
and believe that these events did actually take place. They become the tangible link between
the Dreaming and the People, localising sacredness in the landscape, intertwining space-
time and physical-spiritual worlds.
Embodied architecture: “involuntary memories” and “eidetic experience”
In his essay The Geometry of Feeling, Pallasmaa asks why it is that some buildings seem
to appeal to our feelings and give us a sense of familiarity and pleasure. He considers the
most important architectural experience to be the sense of being in a unique place. He
believes that quality in architecture lies in its capacity for awakening our imagination
through the emotional force that it carries.
An impressive architectural experience sensitizes our whole physical and mental

receptivity. It is difficult to grasp the structure of feeling because of its vastness and
diversity. In experience we find a combination of the biological and the culturally
derived, the collective and the individual, the conscious and the unconscious, the
analytical and the emotional, the mental and the physical. (Pallasmaa 1986, cited in
Nesbit 1996: 453)
Due to its primarily tactile nature, it is impossible to think of architecture outside the
realm of experience and Merleau-Ponty’s thinking can give us a discerning view into the
significance of the experience of architecture. Thomas Baldwin points out that Merleau-
Ponty sees the senses in perception as intentionally invisible in the way they organise
experience and constitute the world; they make their role invisible to us. (Baldwin 2004) In
order to rediscover and articulate the world we need to get a detached look at it with the help
of reflection. Art and philosophy can provide us with that detachment. Architecture also has
the capacity to provide both a detachment as well as a sense of belonging.
Reflection does not withdraw from the world towards the unity of consciousness as
the world’s basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks
16
from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus
brings them to our notice; it alone is consciousness of the world because it reveals
that world as strange and paradoxical. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: xv)
This mystery that the world instils in us ignites its invitation to experience the world,
to attempt to comprehend it and reunite with it.
Taking into account Merleau-Ponty’s reading of the body and the world fused as one,
one can begin to see the potential of architectural experience and thought. “... [T]he
experience of architecture, perhaps especially of it, is bound up with the experience of one’s
body as the medium for that experience.” (Rush 2009: 4) In a sense the significance of
architecture lies in the fact that there is a reciprocal relationship between our human body
and the body of architecture. In Fred Rush’s words: “... the experience [of architecture] is
embodied in that it is experience had by means of the body as the seat of perception, and it
is also embodied because the architecture itself, as a complex body, impels experience in
that way.” (ibid. 4)
For Juhani Pallasmaa architecture is an extension of nature in the same way that the
body is an extension of the world for Merleau-Ponty, providing us with the means to
encounter and understand the world. It strengthens the existential experience and upholds
our sense of “being in the world” by constituting an uninterrupted continuum with our inner
world. Pallasmaa appeals for the need “... to understand that we do not live separately in
physical and mental worlds – these two projections are completely fused into a singular
existential reality.” (Pallasmaa 2007: 17)
Pallasmaa has long advocated against the dominance of the sense of vision indicating
towards the primacy of the haptic sense. In his book The Thinking Hand, Pallasmaa exposes
the hand not just as a passive executor of the intentions of the brain but as an entity with its
own intentionality, knowledge and skills, which links it to a deeper layer of our
consciousness. He remains suspicious of the computerised hand in architecture because its
process and product has a false precision that removes the uncertainty of the creative
process. This process engages only the visual realm causing a distance between the maker
and the product. He does, however, maintain that the unconscious experience of touch is
concealed not only in vision but also in all our senses, revealing its primacy. (Pallasmaa
2009)
In his book The Eyes of the Skin, Pallasmaa (2005) puts forward the importance of
embodied experience and the inherent interaction of the senses. “The boundary line between
the self and the world is identified by our senses. Our contact with the world takes place
through the skin of the self by means of specialised parts of our enveloping membrane.”
(Pallasmaa 2005: 100) Our enveloping membrane, the skin, covers not only our hands but
also our eyes, ears, mouth and nose. “Touch is the unconsciousness of vision, and this hidden
tactile experience determines the sensuous qualities of the perceived object.” (ibid. 102)
Pallasmaa (ibid) makes a distinction between concentrated vision and peripheral
vision. In his opinion, peripheral vision engages an atmosphere and envelops us in the flesh
of the world. Since the ancient past, clear vision and light have been used as metaphors for
knowledge and truth, but Pallasmaa believes that it is through peripheral vision that we
engage in the mystery of the world. According to Pallasmaa, during emotional states we
appear to be shifting towards the more archaic senses, from vision down to hearing, touch
and smell and from light to shadow. For this reason he laments the imbalance of our sensory
17
system in our modern environments and the loss of experiential depth evident in visually
dominated architecture which is caused by isolating the eye from the other senses, or from
each other in general. Indeed, this separation and reduction fragments the innate
complexity, comprehensiveness and plasticity of the perceptual system, reinforcing a sense
of detachment and alienation. (ibid)
Pallasmaa, proceeds in his thinking by giving an account of the importance of the
interaction of the senses. Sound, for example, measures space and makes its scale
comprehensible by creating an experience of interiority:
Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of dripping water in the darkness
of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the
void of darkness. The space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity
sculpted directly in the interior of the mind.” (ibid. 50)
Texture, taste and vision are also linked. “The sensuous materials and skilfully crafted
details of Carlo Scarpa’s architecture as well as the sensuous colours of Louis Barragán’s
houses frequently evoke oral experiences.” (ibid. 60) Indeed, spaces are often carved in our
memories through their unique smell. “Every dwelling has its individual smell of home.”
(ibid. 54)
Our senses, merged, provide us with a deep existential experience. “A pebble polished
by waves is pleasurable to the hand, not only because of its soothing shape, but because it
expresses the slow process of its formation; a perfect pebble on the palm materialises
duration, it is time turned into shape.” (ibid. 58) The sound of the waves that formed it, its
smooth texture and colour, its salty taste and the smell of the sea are all merged in our mind.
All our senses collaborate.
Juhani Pallasmaa advocates for the role of the body as the locus of not only perception
but also thought and consciousness. Influenced by Merleau-Ponty, like him he sees the
relation between the self and the world as osmotic, interpreting and mutually defining each
other, emphasising the simultaneity of the interacting senses. He goes on to quote Merleau-
Ponty: “My perception is ... not a sum of visual, tactile and audible givens: I perceive in a
total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique way of being,
which speaks to all my senses at once.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, quoted in Pallasmaa 2005: 21)
Even before we are able to speak our bodies inhabit the world. Our senses and thoughts are
attuned to our environment, natural or built; our embodied existence resides at the very
basis of our interaction and integration with the world. “We are occupants of this world with
its physical realities and mental mysteries, not outside observers or theoreticians of the
world.” (Pallasmaa 2009: 117)
We are intricately connected with the world through our senses and through their
effect on our mind in a reciprocal exchange. Human existence is a fundamentally embodied
condition. “The senses are not merely passive receptors of stimuli, and the body is not only
a point of viewing the world from a central perspective. Neither is the head the sole locus of
cognitive thinking, as our senses and entire bodily being directly structure, produce and
store silent existential knowledge. The human body is a knowing entity. Our entire being in
the world is a sensuous and embodied mode of being, and this very sense of being is the
ground of existential knowledge. ‘[U]nderstanding is not a quality coming to human reality
18
from the outside; it is its characteristic way of existing,’ as Jean-Paul Sartre claims.” (ibid.
13)
Pallasmaa goes as far as to say that our senses think and that they structure our
relationship with the world in a perpetually unconscious activity. “Our entire bodily
constitution and senses ‘think’ in the fundamental sense of identifying and processing
information about our situation in the world, and mediating sensible behavioural
responses.” (ibid. 116) But our thinking senses take us further than that. In our mind we
reach with our imagination to deeper realms of understanding.
We do not live in an objective world of matter and facts... The characteristic human
mode of existence takes place in the worlds of possibilities, moulded by our
capacities of fantasy and imagination. We live in worlds of mind, in which the
material and the mental, as well as the experiences, remembered and imagined,
completely fuse into each other. (ibid. 127)
Merleau-Ponty’s writings “... analyse the intertwining of the senses, the mind and the world,
providing a stimulating ground for the understanding of artistic intention and impact.”
(ibid) According to Pallasmaa (2009), architecture’s embodied nature has the capacity to
structure and articulate our experiences of ‘being in the world’ and renders possible an
intense experiential and existential encounter. In architecture, perception, memory and
imagination are engaged in constant interaction. Even when we are not physically present
we have the capacity to e n t e r a remembered or imagined place. “Architecture is our
primary instrument in relating us with space and time, giving these dimensions a human
measure. It domesticates limitless space and endless time to be tolerated, inhabited and
understood by humankind.” (Pallasmaa 2005: 17)
There are many examples of embodied architecture that one could use. From Alvar Aalto’s
Muuratsalo Experimental house (1953), Carlo Scarpa’s work and especially his interventions
in Verona’s Castelvecchio (1956-1964), Louis Barragán’s and Peter Zumthor’s work and their
emotive power, to Morphosis’ Cooper Union in NewYork (2009) embracing complexity and
hazard and Steven Holl’s study of anchoring and intertwining at the Helsinki Museum of
Contemporary Art, (1993-98), to name a few.
I will, however, use a lesser known example: Tadao Ando’s Row House, Sumiyoshi Azuma
house in Osaka (1975-1976), a unique interpretation of a house with an intriguing spatial
configuration. Here, Tadao Ando chooses a very radical intervention in the conventional
housing typology. Behind an austere facade, the house is separated in two by a courtyard,
intervening in-between the living room and the dining room, kitchen and bathroom. “The
courtyard interrupts the activities for which these individual spaces are set; this
unconventional configuration demands the inhabitant to be, according to Ando, a man of
‘strong will’ who dares to traverse the courtyard even on a harsh winter day.” (Baek, in:
Odgers 2006: 183) The reason for this decisive decision is given by Ando himself:
In an early work, Row House, Sumiyoshi (Azuma House), I severed in half a place
for living composed of austere geometry by inserting an abstract space for the play
19
of wind and light. It sought to inject inquiry, thereby, into the inertia that has
overtaken man’s dwelling. (Ando 1977, quoted in ibid. 183-184)
Ando perceived the necessity of such a radical action in order to awaken man’s sensibilities
basing it on a broad spiritual base.
Baek refers to the idea of fudo, a concept articulated primarily by the Japanese philosopher
and historian Tetsuro Watsuji (1889-1960).
“In Japan, the idea of a perceiver who is enshrouded by a specific atmosphere of the
world has been articulated in the idea of fudo, or its conventional, yet largely
dissatisfactory, translation into climate. ... [Fudo] is about the climatic and
topographical field as they affect the interiority of selfhood and as they initiate
cultural activities that extend the moment of self-discovery to the intersubjective
realm.” (ibid.186)
According to Baek, Watsuji would claim that when one says “I feel cold”, the
interiority of the “I” is filled with the coldness of the surrounding air bounding him with his
environment but also with others, forming a “social space of sympathy”.
In this sense, Ando’s unconventional courtyard can therefore be seen as a medium for
recovering a sense of fudo within a metropolis where the environment is mostly controlled.
Baek again quotes Ando:
With the sense of life generated by this approach to form and materials as a m e d i
a t i n g element, it becomes possible to inspire contacts between people and things
(mono) on a deeper level and in this way to evolve new relations between them. This
in turn will enable human beings to hope for the emergence of new place in which
to experience the kind of self-knowledge that people today are losing. (Ando 1977,
quoted ibid: 187)
This knowledge that we are losing, according to Baek, “... does not lie in the
introspective vision of one’s interiority, but in the rediscovery of fudo as the mode of
enabling a revelation about the world, that embraces and penetrates one’s interiority.” (ibid.
187)
By thrusting the occupants of the house into the courtyard, Ando enables them to
unite with their environment.
A simple geometric form, the concrete box is static; yet as nature participates within
it, and as it is activated by human life, its abstract existence achieves vibrancy it its
meeting with concreteness. ... The architecture created at that moment is filled with
a space that provokes and inspires.” (Ando 1991 in: Nesbitt 1996: 459)
The design intervention therefore does not implement a separation but rather
paradoxically a connection; a boundary that connects by separating. The architect in a sense
obliges the resident of the house to put himself in the boundary. In so doing, the occupant
20
brings life to the courtyard and the courtyard to the occupant in a process of
interpenetration.
In order to define the intertwinedness between the perceiver and the object of
perception in fudo, Baek refers to the concept of shintai in the Japanese tradition, which
reflects ‘the actively knowing body’ as ‘the agent for deep and active sensation’. In Japanese
thought, according to Baek, the self is considered as an empty vessel. The emptiness of
selfhood in the act of perception starts as a form of self-negation in order to embrace the
other, and through that process, it paradoxically leads to acquiring one’s selfhood. This
thinking resonates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s insight on the body as flesh of the world.
The emptiness of selfhood is not a conceptual theorem, but a principle that is

corporeally actualised at the moment when one feels the other as his own interiority.
The body is like an iconic instrument for the unconditioned acceptance of a thing,
constituting the deepest layer of one’s knowing the thing. (Baek in: Odgers 2006:
188)
In the courtyard of Ando’s Azuma House, the perceptual experience of the agents of
fudo -wind, light, rainwater or snow- is an enriching one.
According to Ando, wind does not remain on the margins of our body, but
‘penetrates’ it. The perceiver’s experience of a cool breeze in the courtyard of the
Azuma House through shintai, ‘a sentient being that responds to the world’, brings
about its absolute contradictory of warmness and softness as the expression of the
very self. (ibid. 189)
The agents of nature through the perceptual experience are bound to the self in a
constant interaction and definition. Indeed, in the process of self-negation, the self as
boundary engages and embraces fudo and brings life into the courtyard. In Ando’s own
words:
When water, wind, light, rain, and other elements of nature are abstracted within
architecture, the architecture becomes a place where people and nature confront
each other under a sustained sense of tension. I believe it is this feeling of tension
that will awaken the spiritual sensibilities latent in contemporary humanity. (Ando
1991 in: Nesbitt 1996: 460)
In this example, the Japanese world-view is intertwined with the built environment.
Architecture indeed does not invent meaning. It shows an inherent capacity to direct us to
experience our own existence with a unique intensity by touching what is already buried
deep in our embodied memories. “My perception is ... not a sum of visual, tactile and audible
givens: I perceive in a total way with my whole being: I grasp a unique structure of the thing,
a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964)
21
Final thoughts: The human element
In his influential to architectural thought essay The Intertwining – The Chiasm within
The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty (1968) describes the notion of the flesh or chair
in French which he uses “... to refer to the way in which the world and the lived body are
fused” (Rush 2009: 19). In this essay he upholds that: “My body is made of the same flesh
as the world ... this flesh of my body is shared by the world...” (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 146)
The flesh he describes is neither mind nor matter. “It is the coiling over of the visible upon
the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body...”. (ibid. 173) It is this ‘bodily’
intentionality that brings the possibility of meaning to our existence and commands our
collective existence, our past and present. Man thrives on this as an organism in a state of
pre-established harmony with its environment.
Often we talk of space, our surrounding environment as though we are separated and
external to it. It is, however, my belief that this is a reflection of this intentionality, the
directionality of our existence. By choosing to separate things in our mind, we in fact relate
and combine them. I believe that we are engaged with our surrounding environments, much
as mother and child, in a process of continual reference, a dialectically enriched existence.
We need to accept the complexity of our being and inhabit the cosmos with our emerging,
transformable essence.
The system is you. Reabsorbing possibility, yielding (to) potential. At every step you
ground and orient yourself, using gravity to propel you along your habit-ridden line
of action. … Mid-step, in passing, something registers and resonates. It hits you
where your equilibrium shifts. … Where habit meets event. (Massumi in Brouwer
1998: 160)
The nature of the concept of b o u n d a r y reflects this challenge through the attraction
of the other in order to define the self. Massumi urges that: The unpredictable and essential
transformation of being is felt before it is thought; reaching a critical boundary, it emerges
reborn through an immanent limit, “… immanent to bodily change, enveloped in potential,
outside possibility and predictability. The event horizon. (ibid. 166)
Architecture is thus revealed as a fundamental manifestation of our existence within
the cosmos. It has the power to awaken man’s sensibilities, by creating a transparent
language of built form that enables and guides the revelation of our holistic unity with the
environment. Architecture has the capacity to inspire by calling to our united mind and
body. Material and abstract space becomes the source of this emotive power in our attempt
to understand and read a model of the world. This experience of becoming aware of our
indissoluble connection with the world, materialised in architecture, educates, stimulates
and activates people to change in our modern environments, making us conscious of the
forces that shape it, enabling the creation of a complex, integrated, contradictory and
meaningful future. An architecture that upholds these conditions, that engages the boundary
between man and the cosmos, is an architecture that is true to its nature as a fundamental
manifestation of our existence. It is important to aspire to such architecture. The rediscovery
of of our self is dependent upon it. In the words of Juhani Pallasmaa:
22
The timeless task architecture is to create embodied and lived existential metaphors
that concretise and structure man’s being in the world. ... Architecture enables us to
perceive and understand the dialectics of permanence and change, to settle
ourselves in the world, and to place ourselves in the continuum of culture and time.
(Pallasmaa 2005: 71)
Architecture exists in this boundary between earth and sky. Within this boundary the
essence of man penetrates towards the cosmos and the essence of the cosmos penetrates
towards man. Neither action, nor thought or sense is beyond or external to the world, we are
bound as one. Man is here indeed revealed as inhabiting the boundary. It is through him,
his body and mind united, that the universe is unfolded and architecture is the medium of
this revelation.
References
1. Ando, T. (1991) Towards New Horizons in Architecture. Tadao Ando, New York: of
Modern Art. pp.75-76. In: Nesbitt, K. ed. (1996) Theorizing a New Agenda for
Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995. New York, Princeton
Architectural Pres.
2. Baek, J. (2006) The perception of self-negation in the space of emptiness;
3. The primitive in Tadao Ando’s architecture. In: Odgers, J., Samuel, F., Sharr, A. eds.
Primitive, Original matters in architecture. London New York, Routledge.
4. Clarke, P. (2003) Where the Ancestors Walked; Australia as an Aboriginal Landscape.
Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.
5. Ganiatsas, V. (1994) Boundaries in Architectural and Urban Design. Lecture in SANI
seminar: Fortressed Cities – Present and Future. Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
6. Massumi, B. (1998). “Event horizon,” In J. Brouwer, ed, The art of the accident,
Rotterdam, Dutch Architecture Institute/V2, pp. 154168. May, T. (1993).
7. Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London, Sage Publications Ltd.
8. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception. Smith, C. trans. London
and New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
9. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) Sense and Non-Sense, Northwestern University Press
(Evaston), p.48. Quoted in: Pallasmaa, J. (2005) The eyes of the skin: Architecture
and the senses. Academy Editions.
10. Pallasmaa, J. (1986) The Geometry of Feeling; A look at the Phenomenology of
Architecture. Scala: Nordic Journal of Architecture and Art. 4 June, pp.22-25. In:
Nesbitt, K. ed. (1996) Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of
Architectural Theory 1965-1995. New York, Princeton Architectural Pres.
11. Pallasmaa, J. (2005) The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses. Academy
Editions.
12. Pallasmaa, J. (2007) New Architectural Horizons. Architectural Design, 77(2)
March/April, pp.16-23. John Wiley &Sons Ltd.
13. Pallasmaa, J. (2009) The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in
Architecture. West Sussex, John Willeyand sons, Ltd.
23
14. Rush, F. (2009) On Architecture. Thinking in Action series. New York and London,
Tailor & Francis Group, Routledge.
15. Saridaki, M. (1999) Discourse on Boundary, As an ontological force driving the
formation and perception of the environment. Masters thesis, School of Architecture,
Edinburgh College of Art, Heriot – Watt University.
16. Saridaki, M. (2012) “BOUNDARY: an expression of the dynamic unity between man
and environment. Building a paradigm to unravel the mind’s fundamental kinship with
the cosmos and its role as the vehicle of the universe’s unfolding meaning”, PhD thesis,
University of Edinburgh.
17. Spiller, N. (2010) Digital Solopsism and the Paradox of the Great ‘Forgetting’. In:
Oxman, R. & Oxman, R. eds. (2010) The New Structuralism. AD Architectural Design,
80(4) July/August. London, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
18. Van Schaik, L. ed. (2002) Poetics in Architecture. AD Architectural Design, 72(2)
March. London, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
19. Van Schaik, L. (2005) Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture. AD Primers,
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
24
THE MEMORY SPACE OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR GENERATION
Natalia Chodorowska
The works of the German authors belonging to the post-war generation are interesting
contributions to European literature – both in sociological and historical sense – and are
gaining more and more attention. In the modern German literature, the emergence of new
current can be observed: the literature of the grandchildren (Enkelliteratur). This current
provides the ground for discussing the past. Such a wave of ‘remembering’ of the so-called
third generation stems from growing up in families which members who experienced life in
the times of the national socialism and were involved in it in different manners.
The public polemic with the collective guilt experienced by the Germans helped the
members of the third generation to understand that they also want to be a part of this
historical discussion. The glorified and heroic stories about the times of national socialism
and the post-war era told by grandparents and parents, vague facts, secrets as well as the
feeling of the loss and their own lack of a source of reminiscing inspired the authors to set
up on a laborious trace search to clear up discrepancies and to participate in the public
debate also as a new, fresh voice of the young generations. Nevertheless, the journey back in
time – which often takes some authors to the home towns of their forefathers in the former
German territories – serves above all to formulate their own, entire informal narration based
on the accumulated knowledge and personal experiences. Only after this has been achieved,
the members of the successors generation can find a way to their own identity.
Sociological and psychological outline of the third generation
The representatives of the third generation in Germany were born in the middle of the
1960s and, together with the first and the second generation, form the informal
intergenerational dispute. The members of this age group are the grandchildren of the
Germans involved in national socialism (cf. Herrmann 2004: 142). Yet, an indirect
connection exists between them and the events of the Nazi era as they do not have any
personal and biographic memories from this time – the Nazi Germany is not a part of their
biography. The only access they have to the experiences of their grandparents and parents
is provided through history (cf. Leonhard 2006: 75). Therefore, it is not surprising that in
the debates of the younger generations about the twentieth century Germany the main focus
is put on the past and especially its recollection in the memory of an individual (cf.
Herrmann 2004: 142).
In the literary works of the representatives of the third generation, the narrative
focuses on the memories of the grandparents and parents, but, at the same time, does not
deal with the official sanctioned version of the German past: “the young authors (…)
remember things which they have not experienced. On the contrary, they make no secret of
the fact that they do not have their own memories, but instead they approach the past about
25
Part 1 Natalia Chodorowska The Memory Space…
which they want to talk through recreating it from mere scraps and traces” (Hermann 2004:
143-144; AT1).
It can be observed that more and more representatives of the third generation want
to actively participate in the intergenerational dispute through introducing a new narration
about the German past in the form of interviews, research and literature. For a long time
they were forced to compete with the generations of their parents and grandparents for their
interpretation of the truth: “the second generation held the monopoly for the interpretation
of truth and tried to deny the third generation every possibility for the moral and reasonable
judgment of it” (Blasberg 2006: 166; AT).
Nina Leonhard notes that, in the context of the family conversation, it is easier for the
representatives of the third generation to draw a line between the history that is handed
down to them in the informal communication space of the family and the knowledge they
have about the national socialism which they obtained at school; this results in differences
in judging the involvement of family members in the machine of the regime (cf. Leonhard
2006: 76). A different position is represented by Harald Welzer who claims that due to the
indirect and surrogated character of the stories and the lack of knowledge in this area
combined with the emotional relation to the witness generation, it is extremely difficult for
the younger generation to separate the family history from that of the regime. The task is
made even more difficult, when there is even a hint of suspicion that family members were
involved in the regime or that there are mysterious gaps in their stories (cf. Welzer 2006:
48).
Jens Fabian Pyper is aware that it is impossible to talk about the Nazi Germany and
the post-war era in a completely objective manner, whether through informal or official
discourse:
My generation can learn about the Holocaust only through the pictures and
recollections of the parents and grandparents and, therefore, it is not possible to do
it without getting subjective opinions about the provided facts. However, from my
point of view it happens in the following way: either we try to think together which
opinions are still relevant today or are treated as objects to be educated. (Pyper
2004: 229; AT)
While the members of the third generation listen to and accept the stories of their
grandparents and parents, many of them attempt to enter in a dialogue with those narratives
and to defeat their forefathers through changing their interpretations and taking out the
uncomfortable portrait of a culprit in the process of “cumulative heroization” (kumulative
Heroisierung) during which they try “to combine the evil of the national-socialist rule and
the goodness of own grandparents and great-grandparents in peaceful coexistence” (Welzer,
Moller, and Tschuggnall 2002: 80; AT). This notion, invented by Harald Welzer, is not used
in case of all narratives and stories – in the literary texts in which the main role is played by
the representatives of the third generation, the concealment and repression of the past is
often omitted in favour of the search for the truth leading to the confrontation with the
generations of their forefathers (cf. Herrmann 2004: 155-156).
1 Author’s translation
26
The need to discover the family past often leads the representatives of the third
generation to the former German territories in Poland where their grandparents and parents
lived before and during the World War II and from where they had to run away after the war
out of fear of the Soviets. Such a nostalgic and motivated by family history journey
undertaken by the generation of the grandchildren to the Eastern Europe finds its reflection
in the contemporary German literature.
Time, space and mobility in Tanja Dückers’ Himmelskörper
German author Tanja Dückers (born in 1968) is one of the representatives of literature
of the grandchildren generation. Her novel Himmelskörper (Heavenly bodies), published
in 2003, can be described as a family novel with autobiographic elements which discusses
the disastrous impact of revealing family secrets from the Nazi era on the relations between
the members of the first generation and their descendants. In this novel the leitmotiv of the
sentimental trips to the former German territories in Eastern Europe allows the third
generation to get closer to the vague tracks of the family history.
“I (…) have the necessary historical distance to see the facts” (Haberl 2003: 10; AT) –
commented Tanja Dückers in an interview with Tobias Haberl for Berliner Zeitung. Those
words were both the defence of her novel and the reaction to the critical reviews which
appeared after the publication of her novel. In their reviews, the critics pointed to the
similarities between Dückers’ novel and Crabwalk, the 2002 Günter Grass’ novel, which also
tells the story of the ship Wilhelm Gustloff sunk on 30 January 1945 by the Soviets.
The main point of this discussion is whether Tanja Dückers as a young author of the
post-war generation is entitled to take a position regarding the Gustloff tragedy and “to
search for answers to the questions once concealed or suppressed” (Kamińska 2010: 149-
150; AT). Paradoxically, though, due to the age of the author, Tanja Dückers’ novel should
not be shun and forgotten as it can appeal “to the young audience interested in history and
eager to discover and clear any family secrets from the past” (Kamińska 2010: 150; AT).
The novel also carries autobiographic elements: aunt and uncle of the author escaped
on the deck of minesweeper and not on Gustloff (cf. Stüben 2006: 177). In an interview with
Andreal Lutz, Dückers explained what inspired her to write the novel:
I was cleaning the flat of my grandparents and rummaged through the remains of
their past lives: clothes, parcels, postcards, letters, town maps, and documents from
the war and the post-war period. In this flat I could discover a piece of German
history. All that inspired me to write the novel Himmelskörper (Stüben 2006: 177;
AT).
Dückers’ confession seems to reflect the idea presented by Welzer: the interest in
memories which can be observed among the representatives of the succession generation is
to be understood as an attempt to the self-assertion in the face of disorientation. It is also
worth noticing that the protagonist of the novel, Freia, represents the search for one’s
identity through developing interest in the muddled family history (cf. Kallweit 2005: 177).
Tanja Dückers wants “to appear in the name of the generation without the authentic
experience” and to reevaluate the impartial perspective of the succession generation
(Kamińska 2010: 151; AT). To do so, she decided to make the protagonist of her novel a
27
young woman for whom the only sources of information about the past are historical books.
The author explains her decision stating:
I fear a certain authenticity arrogance. The fact that I am reproached for my age and
the fact that, according to the elderly people, if one did not find themselves in the
bomb hail, one does not have right to write about the subject of war and post-war
era. This is why I have chosen a protagonist who was not on Gustloff and needs to
investigate this matter (Haberl 2003; AT).
At the same time it needs to be noted that the main focus of the novel is not the escape
of the family in 1945 as “the investigation pursued by the future generations of what
happened at that time” is moved to its central part. In fact, “the main subject [of the novel]
is a personal and collective guilt as a necessary element of finding one’s own identity”
(Stüben 2006: 173; AT). One of the advantages of the novel is the depiction of the connection
between the past and the 1980s and 1990s. The descriptions of the present everyday life
show the influence of the past – especially the World War II – and justify the need of the
present generations to explore the biographies of their grandparents. This shows very clearly
the motivation of the descendants to reassert their identity based on the lives of the
forefathers (cf. Stüben 2006: 173-174). The succession generations become engrossed in the
collective memory of their grandparents and parents whose recollections provide the
evidence that the past events are not expressed realistically, but are reinterpreted according
to personal concern and, as a result, are often false or deceitful (cf. Quindeau 2004: 28).
Freia, the main protagonist and a cloud researcher from Berlin, plans to write a
reminiscent book about her family as the “transformation work”. Therefore she also argues
with her history and conducts the in-depth study of stories, photos and documents of her
grandparents (cf. Herrmann 2004: 150). The story presented in the novel is based on the
main protagonist’s thoughts about her family and a secret affecting the family life build: “Bit
by bit, the picture of the Sandmann and the Bonitzky families consists of the recollections,
images, suppositions, questions with and without answers together, and a secret appearing
in indications” (Blasberg 2006: 152; AT).
Freia’s interest in the memoirs of her family members can be traced back to her early
childhood when it was simply an important element of games and fairy tale stories (cf.
Ganeva 2007:157). Her grandfather’s wounded leg constitutes one of such imagination
spaces for Freia and her brother Paul. For a long time both children asked their grandfather
how he lost his leg. The answer they received – “during the war” – was too puzzling for the
two children and, as a result, they had to create their own interpretations to understand it
(cf. Giesler 2007: 289):
We always got the same answer, namely that grandfather has been at the war. It
never was clear to us what it really meant. War seemed to be, in any case, an awful
place, a danger zone restricted only for men. It was said that grandfather fought long
and hard and that grandmother waited for him for a very long time. (…) We wanted
to complete the vague concept “the war” about which the parents either knew more
than they said or about which they did not have any idea with a logical story. (…)
Paul and I were not quite sure whether “war” referred to a place or an event.
(Dückers 2003: 78-79; AT)
28
What is surprising for the reader is the fact that the grandparents approved of those
naive explanations instead of telling their grandchildren the truth in words understandable
for them and their perception of the world. All the questions asked by children were met
with impatience of their grandmother Jo as she provided them with laconic answers. The
word “war” became the family taboo, the breaking of which was feared by all of its members:
We were angry that the adults either only shouted “It could have been so and so” as
Jo or said nothing at all like Renate or how Peter would just ask: “Can you for once
talk about something else? Grandfather has lost his leg during the war and I also do
not know how”. (Dückers 2003: 82; AT)
The escape of Freia’s grandparents and her mother Renate from the harbour of
Gotenhafen was also shrouded in mystery for years. It was not until a few decades later when
Freia learnt that it was the fact that her grandmother was a Nazi party member that made
the escape from Gotenhafen possible (cf. Dückers 2003: 219).
Moreover, it is revealed that Freia’s mother was involved in hiding the truth about
what really happened in Gotenhafen. It is only by accident that the main protagonist learns
from her grandmother that they owed the survival to small Renate: in dramatic
circumstances in the harbour, she pointed to their neighbours stating that “They haven’t
even made the greeting2” (Dückers 2003: 249-250; AT) which gave Jo and Renate the
opportunity to escape on the deck of the minesweeper Theodor rather than on Gustloff.
Another notion discussed extensively by Tanja Dückers is the motive of the trips to
Poland which ensure the self-assertion of the central characters (cf. Ächtler 2009: 277). After
learning about the suicide of her uncle Kazimierz from Poland, whom Renate was visiting
very often, Freia decides to go to Warsaw.
During her stay in Warsaw, Freia starts to reminiscent about Kazimierz who was for
her a contradiction of the way in which the image of Poland was painted by her grandparents.
Freia’s grandparents based their opinion on clichés, for example those concerning Polish
economy. In contrast, her uncle showed Freia another picture of Poland: “You must
understand the East just as a base, as a base for a lot of imagination” (Ächtler 2009: 288-
289; AT).
Seeing the monument commemorating the Warsaw ghetto was a deeply moving
experience for Freia during her visit to Warsaw; upon seeing it, Freia reflects on the
importance of this place for the modern Polish state. However, her thoughts on the matter
cannot be harmonised and connected to any existing space. Due to her lack of historical
memory, she finds herself unable to connect the past events with real places (cf. Giesler
2007: 298). Seeing the monument reminded Freia of a photo and letters from the pre-war
era which Renate had shown her. She also wonders whether material souvenirs have a
meaning for their owners and whether they can transfer true recollections in the memory
(cf. Dückers 2003: 170). It has been impossible for Freia to find the traces of the past in this
monument which is a symbol of the tragedy which had really happened many years ago:
2 Hitler salute
29
We went slowly back to the ghetto monument. (…) I tried to think of many victims
and to be sad. Not two metres in front of us a young mother with twins in her arms
ran; the engines of Fiaciks, Ladas and Polonezes roared loudly, music was flowing
from some of them. Where once were the alleys of the Jewish quarter, socialist
buildings made of brick stood already in the early fifties. I tried again to imagine
many people who had to line up here daily from the Warsaw ghetto. However, I
could not connect these thoughts with this cheerful place. Knowledge that the people
stood there, that they were fetched from there was totally abstract for me. I stood by
a monument, not in a real place. (…) The monument substitutes as an explanation,
as a token the real place. A monument is almost the proof of the fact that the place
which was here is no more. A place cannot exist and be commented at the same
place. Maybe this relation is proportional. (Dückers 2003: 169-170; AT)
What Freia notices as she is wandering the streets of the city is the contrast between
the topography and historical panorama of the past and the present Warsaw – she tries to
compare them in her imagination and find common points. Kazimierz’s suicide as well as
the atmosphere of the city caused in protagonist the feeling of estrangement and emptiness
(cf. Ächtler 2009: 289-290). The trip to Poland is a disappointment as there is almost the
present reality is for Freia an alien one. In addition, the protagonist lacks knowledge and
experience to properly interpret what she sees:
And also now during my trip I could find nothing which would be a key to
understanding Kazimierz’s death. I ran through the streets of Warsaw, I heard the
noises of the city, the loud sounds of Fiat 126p, (…) I inhaled the smell of musty air
and plastic from the wide open doors of the department stores‚ ‘Wars’ and ‘Sawa’.
(…) I asked myself, how this town had smelled, sounded and looked back then, in
the forties. (…) This town seemed to be the same and not the same (…) what had
happened in Warsaw had nothing to do with organic changes. (Dückers 2003: 170-
171; AT)
Instead, she understands the magnitude of human tragedy which had occurred in the
city. As this knowledge rises in her consciousness, the old picture of the town completely
dissolves in her mind and, on its remains, a new one is built, without the old topographic
and social components:
In frightening manner it becomes clear to me that the plan of the Nazis to wage a
destruction war in the East had come true here. And standing on the spot, which
had once been the Warsaw ghetto, the dimension of the effacement of his former
inhabitants became visible to me (…). No sensuous impression still provided its
existence. (…) Here not only new houses stood instead of the old ones, but a whole
city had disappeared and been built new from the ground. (Dückers 2003: 171; AT)
The protagonist admires the speed with which the rebuilding of Warsaw took place
and the extent to which it was conducted almost as if nothing should remind the inhabitants
of the city of the World War II. Nevertheless, Freia cannot get rid of the feeling that, in such
a flawless picture of the city, there is a hidden urge to remove all past. In her opinion, it is
30
done in order to convince everyone that it is a beginning of a new chapter in the history of
both the country and the city and that the past can disappear and cease to exist within the
realm of reality. It proves the permanent presence of pain in the history of relations between
the Germans and the Poles; although architectonical structure of the city of Warsaw is
reconstructed, it is still impossible to escape the tragic past of the city (cf. Dückers 2003:
172).
The atmosphere of the city also influences the internal condition of the main
protagonist; she learns about it observing her own reactions – or rather lack of thereof –
upon seeing the Warsaw ghetto. Freia feels that she is unable to approach the past in an
emotional way. For her, the reconstruction of the city after its destruction has been too
perfect (cf. Stüben 2006: 183-184):
The emptiness, the absence which I still felt like an invisible poison shimmering in
the air, had lain down on me. Strangely and without passion I ran through the town,
meeting its emptiness with emptiness, with a dull joylessness (…). The fact that I
could feel nothing, horrified me. I could establish no communication with all that
had happened in this town. (Dückers 2003: 172-173; AT)
Another journey to Poland which this time Freia takes with her mother, leads the two
women to Gdynia. Provided with an opportunity to talk about Wilhelm Gustloff, the
protagonist asks her mother whether she would like to go there once again and, after the
moment of silence, the mother agrees (cf. Dückers 2003: 288). The last pages of the novel
contain a chronical report from this visit describing how both women walked through the
town which had not changed much since the World War II, went on walks on the beaches
and promenades and got closer to through speaking openly about their experiences and
feelings.
During one of such walks, Renate utters a short sentence relaying back to her
terrifying experiences from the escape in January 1945: “Freia, when I was the last time here,
there were twenty degrees below zero” (Dückers 2003: 295; AT). This is the moment in
which she starts to feel discourage by the appearances surrounding her as she cannot
connect and identify with place and is unable to see the parallel between the present and the
past:
And I thought of Jo’s descriptions of the January days of the year ‘45, thought again
of the black and white pictures of the town and the harbour which I knew. For one
moment I felt dizzy. Maybe because I felt weird fluttering in my belly again, maybe
because my surroundings seemed all at once completely unreal to me. The fact that
it was now a midsummer and we were in a Polish Majorca did not speak to me. The
photos and the stories had been my reality and I did not know how I should bring
them, even in most distant, in this relaxed beach atmosphere. It seemed to me that
if somebody could immediately pull up a canvas in front of me, the Gustloff would
appear (…) in the horizon of black, highly piled up Cumulonimbus. (Dückers 2003:
295-296; AT)
In the article written by Meike Herrmann the following remark can be found: “the
common trip of the mother and daughter to Gdynia seems to be the imitation of a search for
31
traces. In this place, nothing is searched for and nothing is found” (Herrmann 2004: 150;
AT). In contrast, Ewelina Kamińska claims that the trip made by the two women should be
understood as a catharsis. Both of them, Renate and Freia, seem to have formed a deeper
connection with each other, even if Freia does not share the perspective and the reminiscent
construct represented by her mother (cf. Kallweit 2005: 181).
Seeing a tanker on the sea during the twilight is very meaningful for Renate and Freia
gives it a bit of her attention. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Freia has won something
during the journey, namely she managed to find answers to questions which have been
plaguing her for years (cf. Kamińska 2010: 155). During one of such honest conversations,
she makes an important scientific discovery which she aimed to achieve throughout her all
professional career – the formation of Cirrus Perlucidus: “There I discovered something. I
reached for my mini binoculars and stared in the sky. A cloud, like of silk, (…) I trembled, I
took an immense number of pictures, I felt my heartbeat pounding in my temples” (Dückers
2003: 303; AT).
Jens Stüben explains the symbolic significance of this scene as follows:
The symbolism of Perlucidus is confirmed by the fact that Freia discovers the
Cirrustype exactly at the same moment the last of her secrets vanishes – on the pier
of Gdynia – exactly where the fight for the last places took place; therefore, exactly
at the moment when the mother reveals her mental state, her doubts about their
right to live. This is the central element of the novel. Freia’s meteorological discovery
corresponds with her knowledge of the essence of Renate’s life tragedy. (Stüben
2006: 182; AT)
This motive of a cloud can be also treated as a symbol of the historical memory. The
concept was invented by Freia’s supervisor: “the floating border between the subjective and
objective history, between fact and sensation [so] even a weather phenomenon can act as
commemorative media” (Dückers 2003: 307; AT). Therefore, “its aim is to overcome a
symbolic gap between history and stories” (Ächtler 2009: 296; AT).
The pictures of a rare type of cloud correspond, in this case, with pictures which were
a trigger for the process of remembering; for example, during the resolution of the
grandparents’ story. Just as the young meteorologist puts together her cloud atlas from the
photos of clouds, she does the same with the memories of other family members in order to
create a coherent structure (cf. Stüben 2006: 178).
This motive accompanies Freia’s development as a character and is motivated by the
need of “transparency” and “spiritual purification” (Kallweit 2005: 180; AT). If clouds
symbolise the family history, this means that the main protagonist wants the past of her
family to be “so clear that it hides nothing” (Stüben 2006: 181; AT).
Therefore, the author focuses on the question of debt of those whom escaped and
whom sacrificial role can be assigned. Dückers breaks with the “myth of the denied suffering
of the innocent German refugees from the East” (Stüben 2006: 188; AT). She does not deter
from posing uncomfortable questions about the engagement of the expellees who have gone
in history as “the Hitler's last victims” (Stüben 2006: 188; AT). At the same time, she does
not keep herself from showing her sympathy for them. She uses a metaphor of the
transparent Cirrus Perlucidus which often unites opposite poles of the subjective and
objective, the fact and the emotion. This illustrates “in the national recollection of the
32
Germans both guilt (knowledge) and suffering (experience) have their place” (Stüben 2006:
188-189; AT).
Tanja Dückers shows in her novel a multidimensional spectrum of the German post-
war generation, which is personified by the protagonists. The intergenerational dispute in
the communication space of the family, relations to the family members who represent the
first and the second generation, as also the trips to the forefathers’ home villages prove as
the main aspects of the memory space and the identity of the grandchildren generation. The
readers can gain the impression that the story about Freia has a relative positive conclusion.
The time distance to the National Socialism and the World War II is a power of the third
generation members. They are aware of the family’s tragic experiences and their impact on
their life but can reflect on the guilty and sacrificial role of the German people. This is the
reason why they can introduce a new, impartial narration in the historic discourse.
References:
1. Ächtler N., 2009, “Topographie eines Familiengedächtnisses: Polen als Raum der
Gegenerinnerung in Tanja Dückers' Roman Himmelskörper“, Seminar: A Journal of
Germanic Studies 45 (3): 276-298.
2. Blasberg C., 2006, “Erinnern? Tradieren? Erfinden? Zur Konstruktion von
Vergangenheit in der aktuellen Literatur über die dritte Generation“, Erinnern des
Holocaust? Eine neue Generation sucht Antworten, eds. J. Birkmeyer and C.
Blasberg, Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 165-186.
3. Dückers T., 2003, Himmelskörper, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag.
4. Ganeva M., 2007, “From West-German Väterliteratur to Post-Wall Enkelliteratur.
The End of the Generation Conflict in Marcel Beyer’s Spione and Tanja Dückers’
Himmelskörper”, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 43 (2): 149-162.
5. Giesler B., 2007, “Krieg und Nationalsozialismus als Familientabu in Tanja Dückers‘
Generationenroman Himmelskörper“, Imaginäre Welten im Widerstreit. Krieg und
Geschichte in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. L. Koch and M.
Vogel, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 286-303.
6. Haberl T., 22. /23.03.2003, “Meine Version ist die richtige“, Berliner Zeitung.
7. Herrmann M., 2004, “Spurensuche in der dritten Generation. Erinnerung an
Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust in der jüngsten Literatur“, Repräsentationen des
Holocaust im Gedächtnis der Generationen: zur Gegenwartsbedeutung des
Holocaust in Israel und Deutschland, eds. M. Frölich, Y. Lapid and C. Schneider,
Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel, 139-156.
8. Kallweit S., 2005, “Cirrus Perlucidus und die Einsamkeit zwischen zwei
Generationen. Tanja Dückers‘ Roman Himmelskörper als Beitrag zum kulturellen
Gedächtnis“, Verbalträume. Beiträge zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur,
eds. A. Bartl, Augsburg: Wißner, 177-186.
9. Kamińska E., 2010, “Die nötige historische Distanz der Enkelgeneration. Tanja
Dückers‘ Roman Himmelskörper (2003)“, Das "Prinzip Erinnerung" in der
deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur nach 1989, eds. C. Gansel and P. Zimniak,
Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 149-160.
33
10. Leonhard N., 2006, “Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft: Die Erinnerung an den
Nationalsozialismus im Verlauf von drei Generationen“, Erinnern des Holocaust?
Eine neue Generation sucht Antworten, eds. J. Birkmeyer and C. Blasberg, Bielefeld:
Aisthesis, 63-80.
11. Pyper J., 2004, “Die zukünftige Bedeutung des Holocaust aus Sicht der dritten
Generation“, Repräsentationen des Holocaust im Gedächtnis der Generationen: zur
Gegenwartsbedeutung des Holocaust in Israel und Deutschland, eds. M. Frölich, Y.
Lapid and C. Schneider, Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel, 222-233.
12. Quindeau I., 2004, “Spur und Umschrift – Erinnerung aus psychoanalytischer
Perspektive“, Repräsentationen des Holocaust im Gedächtnis der Generationen: zur
Gegenwartsbedeutung des Holocaust in Israel und Deutschland, eds. M. Frölich, Y.
Lapid and C. Schneider, Frankfurt a.M.: Brandes & Apsel, 28-41.
13. Stüben J., 2006, “Erfragte Erinnerung - entsorgte Familiengeschichte. Tanja
Dückers‘ „Wilhelm Gustloff“- Roman Himmelskörper“, Wende des Erinnerns?
Geschichtskonstruktionen in der deutschen Literatur nach 1989, eds. B. Beßlich B.,
K. Grätz and O. Hildebrand, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 169-189.
14. Welzer H., Moller S., Tschuggnall K., 2002, “Opa war kein Nazi“.
Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer
Taschenbuch.
15. Welzer H., 2006, “Ach Opa!” Einige Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Tradierung
und Aufklärung”, Erinnern des Holocaust? Eine neue Generation sucht Antworten,
eds. J. Birkmeyer and C. Blasberg, Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 47-62.
34
THE INTERPRETIVE READING OF THE SPACE IN THE PASSAGE OF TIME
Annalucia D’Erchia
The relationship between Spatiality and Temporality has different kind of

declinations. This essay wants to focus this mutual relation by the concept of memory,
through a similar archaeological process of interpretation of fragments.
The essay regards the history of a city and a monument in which this city has always
identified: Syracuse and its Cathedral3.
The theme of memory, linked with the theme of tradition, is not only a dear theme to
the Scuola di Milano, but is dear to all architects who recognize the "historical sense" as T.S.
Eliot wrote in "Tradition and the Individual Talent"4
Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you
want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense,
which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond
his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness
of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with
his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe
from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous
existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the
timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what
makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely
conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity. (Eliot 1919)
Elliot referred to the world of poetry and literature. But this interpretation can be
adopted also in the architectural area. Eliot had taught us that what is past is also present
and therefore also the future. Memory is not only confronted with what exists, “but with a
feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the
literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous
order” (Eliot 1919). In the case of architecture, the object is the already built. The memory
also covers a more private life, all the things that we experience still affect our way of being,
the way we look, the way we interpret things, and how we translate this into a project.
This assumption leads us to the thought of Aldo Rossi, designer and theorist of
Architecture and of the City5.
Aldo Rossi wrote:
Perhaps the observation of things has remained my most important formal
education; for observation later becomes transformed into memory. Now I seem to see all
the things I have observed arranges like tools in a neat row; they are aligned as in a botanical
3 Syracuse, Colony of Greeks, located in Sicily, in the south of Italy.

4 T. S. Eliot (Saint Louis1888 – London 1965) was a poet and literary critic. He wrote this essay in 1919. It was first published
in The Egoist (1919) and later in Eliot's first book The Sacred Wood (1920).
5 A. Rossi (Milan 1931- Milan1997) was an Italian architect and theorist of Architecture. In 1966 wrote “Architettura della
Città”, then “A Scientific Autobiography,” edited at the first in English and then in Italian by The MIT press in 1981.
35
Part 1 Annalucia D’Erchia The Interpretive Reading…
chart, or a catalogue, or a dictionary. But this catalogue, lying somewhere between

imagination and memory, is not neutral; it always reappears in several objects and
constitutes their deformation and, in some way, their evolution. (Rossi 1981: 23)
So what we observe today, which belongs to the spatiality sphere becomes what we
will remember tomorrow, the remembrance and the memory instead belong to the
temporality sphere.
And Aldo Rossi also said " I do not invent but I remember". And he remembered the
thought of his teacher, in Milano, during the university years: Ernesto Nathan Rogers.6
Rogers, in the academic year 1964-1965 held the Course of History of Art and History
and Styles of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano. In his notes7 to the course inaugural
lecture he mentions Marco Aurelio, Roman emperor but also philosopher and writer.
In Memories Marco Aurelio8 wrote, "Who sees present things sees all those who have
been since the beginning of time and all those that will be for all eternity because all are of
the same nature and of the same species."
It means that all things of the present past and future belong to the same progress of
history and of life and existence: through the knowledge of a subject in depth we can know
everything.
This position is similar to T.S. Eliot interpretation.
The importance of the history for the construction of the present and of the future is
a dear theme not only in literature, architecture and philosophy but also in art. The painting
The legend of the centuries of René Magritte could be a good example. This work of art
translates very well and synthesizes the relation with the memory of history and with the
passage of time, the legend of the centuries precisely.
Although Magritte once said that “the titles of the paintings are not explanations and
the paintings are not illustrations” (1946) the association of something, centuries, that
referring to a temporal fact, to a spatial composition it is quite interesting.
Composition is to put together different things and make them one. but the
relationship between the different terms of the composition may not manifest to us outside
the conventions of space and time. And there are more emphatically spatial compositions
and other more temporal: music, cinema, dance will fade from the more specific time
characteristic towards the space, which is typical of the plastic arts, which is shown by the
works of painting, sculpture and architecture. (E.N.Rogers 1965: 53)9
The relationship between the objects, in the case of Magritte’s painting, is displayed
in a distorted dimensional ratio. But no one succumbs to another. The big chair reminds the
shape of a great dolmen, the first example of trilithon structure, an ancestor of today's
architecture. This bib chair does not crush the little wooden chair, which seems to be fragile.
The big one supports the smaller one and bring it at the top. In Architecture, if we look back
to the masters, we can consider ourselves as dwarfs on giants’ shoulders, able to look farther
away.
6 E.N.Rogers (Trieste 1909 – Gardone Riviera 1969) was an italian architect and theorist of architecture. He found BBPR
with his classmates Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Gian Luigi Banfi.
7 The collection of E.N.Rogers is avaible in Il pentagramma di Rogers. Lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers.
8 Marco Aurelio is considered by the traditional historiography as an enlightened ruler, the fifth of the so-called "good
emperors". He is remembered as an important stoic philosopher, author Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, Memories.

9 This quotation is from “About Composition in Architecture - part two” collected in Il pentagramma di Rogers. Lezioni
universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers.

36
There are architectures in which the city is identified; architectures where memory of
the past is physicality evident, where the gaze and the memory can be compared to the
layering of the material.
The materia crossed by the time that neither marked the skin with wrinkles and scars,
it has changed the proportions, but it has left intact its deeper meaning.
The city, whereof is deal with, is located in one of the Italian Islands, Sicily, in the
south of Italy, near the centre of the Mediterranean Sea: Syracuse (fig.1). The monument,
with whom the city has always identified, is the Cathedral, which is the literal translation of
what at first Marco Aurelio, then T. S. Eliot theorized.
In this Cathedral it there are all fragments of its history up to the present day, with a
subtraction process similar to that carried out by archaeologists in their excavations, to its
temple pagan origins. The Syracuse Cathedral is an emblematic and extreme example
because we are not used to experience a space that preserves itself, showing all his scars,
commingling, eras and cultures that have passed through it.
Many architectural works, as Carlos Martí Aírs teach us in Le variazioni dell’identità.
Il tipo in architettura10 can be studied as the effect of conversion operations from very
simple to more complex structures.
This complexity is determined by the combination of different operations, such as
juxtaposition, combination, overlapping, inversion and variation. We can understand the
complexity of what has become over the centuries.
The concept of transformation appears next to the concept of memory, as the artist
Max Bill reads it. As Max Bill, we will consider the transformations what remains and not
what changes.
Historians agree that from the V century b.C. Syracuse grew up as a Greek colony of
Corinth, wanted by Archia, Dorian aristocratic. The city gradually developed with expansion
of its quarters, the most ancient of which was the island of Ortygia, connected by a small
bridge to form a little peninsula from the Porto Piccolo, Lakkios, to the north to the Porto
Grande to the south.
In the VII century b.C. the build up area spread to the north into the Acradina district.
To the north of Acradina there were great city quarries of stone of which the city is built. In
this area the most of ancient public buildings of the mainland were built. Here the city
expanded itself in two districts: Neapolis and Tyche, which were built on a modular north-
south grid system. On the Epipole plateau, instead the roads developed in north-est
direction.
The city of Syracuse, made by the districts of Ortygia, Acradina, Neapolis, Tyche and
Epipole, was known as the pentapolis.
Ortygia was an ideal land for Greek settlements. The island had freshwater springs,
Fonte Aretusa, two natural harbours, an orographically higher area for the settlement and
acropolis, and a fertile hinterland. The orographic crest of Ortygia became the natural axis,
crossing the island from north to south and linking this inhabited centre with the mainland.
This main axis went inland to join the via lata perpetua mentioned by Cicero in the
10Le variazioni dell’identità. Il tipo in architettura is a revised version of the doctoral thesis that Carlos Martí Aris
(Barcelona 1946) discussed in 1988 at the Departamento de proyectos of the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de
Barcelona.
37
Orationes in Verrem11 that led to Neapolis district. Here there are the relevant civil buildings
of the city: the Greek theatre, the amphitheatre and the Altar of Hieron, near Latomie del
Paradiso.
The orthogonal roads that crisscrossed the town from east to west became, instead,
the minor roads. This system of orthogonal roads is known as “per strigas” and constitutes
a sort of engravings.
If we compare a current map of Syracuse with the archaeological map (fig.2) of the
city we see how this engravings given by the planes of arrangement of the existing road
system follows exactly the ancient city sediment. Archaeological findings have shown that
this main north-south axis held the sacred places of the city: the Athenaion, the Artemision
and the Apollonion. The holy area, which starts from the acropolis, was part of the very first
plans for the city of Ortygia. Syracuse, “as a single block of stone engraved on its surface by
the time that he lived, is a great place of the sedimented memory in the layers that were
summed by man's work” (Ferrari 2012: 88).
The acropolis of Syracuse is now Piazza del Duomo. Today it has a particular lens-
shaped, which is due to the Baroque period interventions. The whole square is Baroque, and
so also the Duomo façade, that belongs to the Spanish era. But if we cross the threshold and
come into the temple, it opens wide in front of us a space of a place where we can
simultaneously read all ages and eras that have gone through it.
If we try to analyse this space with a subtraction method, like the stratigraphic
method used by archaeologists, we can isolate the fragments belonging to each historical
period, and, making a system, we can see the transformations.
Nowadays we can see the Cathedral structure like a basilica with east-west orientation
with three naves: the ceiling of the central nave consists of robust wooden beams, the lower
naves, instead, are barrel vaulted.
The Cathedral (fig.3) opens to the east of the baroque square, to the north on Via
Minerva and it is closed to the south by the bishop's palace and to the west by medieval
buildings. The priesthood is divided into two parts, the choir, rectangular and deep, extends
far beyond the ancient apse. On the southern side there are four chapels, the northern side
highlights the structure of the ancient pagan temple dedicated to Athena and its Doric
columns.
The indoor image of the Cathedral as we see it today is the result of a restoration
carried out in 1927. There were removed all the stucco and plaster that covered the main
nave.
The two columns of opisthodomus, which had been stuccoed, were restored to their
original Syracuse limestone. Some of the columns of the south nave were stripped of
stuccowork so that the Doric capitals could be seen in the entirety. The altars that had
invaded the smaller naves were removed.” (Sgariglia 2011: 81)12
Before the Spanish, to whom we owe the remaining baroque decoration that comes
down to our days, the city was under the Swabian rule. The Cathedral’s structures show no
11Cicero wrote Orationes in Verrem in 70 b.C. in occasion of a trial of criminal low discussed in Rome. The people of the
rich province of Sicily accused Verre, the island's former pro-Praetor, de pecuniis repetundis, official misconduct.
12 This publication is a result of a PhD research project in Surveying and Representation of Architecture and the
Environment – XV Cycle – at the Univesity of Palermo, Sicily, in association with the University of Reggio Calabria, Italy.
38
signs of this, although documentation tells us “in 1317 Bishop Piero Moncada ordered the
restoration works which could have related to the previous Norman roof.” (Agnello 1952).
The Normans gave to the cathedral a façade in their architectural style, defined as
majestic and stern. There is no trace of this façade after a strong earthquake. There's just a
picture in a coat of arms kept in the Bellomo palace13, depicting a façade of the battlements,
the same that are found in side elevation, of its Norman architecture. Before the Normans,
Syracuse was under Arab rule. The Muslims took possession of the building, and plundered
its riches. We have no historical documents on the centuries of Arab domination, but “it is
certain, however, that if everything of artistic interest must have been despoiled, it did not
undergo any architectural changes. Indeed, the iconographic structure remained unaltered
until the second half of the eleventh century.” (Agnello 1996).
Nevertheless, it is assumed that the structure also in this period has been the place of
Islamic worship.
Before the Arabs, in Syracuse were the Byzantines, to whom we owe the basilica layout
as we know it today (fig.4). With the Byzantines the pagan Athenaion starts to host Christian
celebrations, and so must receive conformal transformation to the cult. Compared to the
current plan, we see how the system remains the same, but simplified and stripped of the
side chapels, decorations and baroque stuccoes.
How this structure looked like before becoming church?
It was a Doric hexastyle peripteral temple. The six columns on its ast-west elevation
and fourteen on its north-south elevation stood on a triple-stepped stylobate. The cella had
a pronaos with access to the east and an opisthodomos to the west with two columns at the
front making it dobly in antis. The temple stood on the crepidoma with a ratio of 2:5. The
columns were less than 1.92 m in diameter and 8.71 m in height with a ratio of 4.54. They
were made from local limesone, mouled with 20 flutes and bulging of the entasis. The
columns were topped with Doric capitals whose profile and syntax, regulating the
composition of the trabeation elements, followed the classical rules of the Doric style. The
column spacing also followed Doric rules: the external side of its walls are aligned with the
axes of the frontal columns that stand in front of them. […] The cella that housed the statue
of Athena had no walls or internal columns, despite its transverse width.” (Sgariglia 2011:
48).
There's obviously been a reversal to adapt the pagan temple to Christian worship: the
space between the columns was closed, and the cell was fragmented. There was another
reversal regarding the orientation. The entrance to the temple was from the east, instead the
church entrance is on the opposite side.
A similar interpretation may be done on the side elevation, the one on Via Minerva.
In fact “on the external elevation, during the restoration of 1927, at the north-east corner of
the Cathedral, exploratory probing was carried out which revealed the corner column, the
only one entirely visible externally” (Sgariglia 2001: 82) Here the isolation of fragments
highlights the palimpsest (fig.5).
This monument because of its complexity is the identity of the city of Syracuse and
condenses its history.
13The Bellomo palace is a historical building in Syracuse XIII-XIV century. It is a museum since 1948 following the
detachment of the medieval and modern collection from prehistoric and classic complex of Paolo Orsi Regional
Archaeological Museum.
39
Isolating and subtracting parties, fragments, from the whole, we are back to the fifth
century Syracuse. But if we look again the archaeological map we see that beyond the Via
Minerva, there was a twin temple in size but Ionic style, which has had a different luck,
because not incorporated into a new structure, but partially destroyed, as happens in most
cases. And some of it still remains. The musealization of these portions which are bearers of
a piece of history of the city, with their arrangement, is another way to allow the
interpretation of the fragments in the reading of the space returned by the archaeology.
A small pavilion (fig. 6) designed by Vincenzo Latina14, protects the remains and
allows it to fruition.
The value of these returned space is measured in the knowledge of our history and
our identity. It is just the measured input Artemision project that allows us to imagine
similarities and references, the planes of arrangement, the measures, the original shapes of
the archaeological remains of the Ionic temple to date only partially visible inside Municipal
building.
The pavilion creates a sense of urban cohesion that reintroduces continuity to the
façades on Via Minerva, forming a visual link between the excavation and the famous corner
column of the temple of Athena, which is embedded in the Cathedral and visible through a
vertical cut in the wall. On the inside, he restores visibility to the Ionic temple hide by the
foundations of the town hall which in the 1960s, had abruptly interrupted the continuity of
the urban fabric, hiding its “treasure” in a sort of anonymous closet. (Fulvio Irace, 2012)
The musealization is an overcoming of the traditional image of the museum, an
enclosure where the existing structures are preserved, whether they have artistic or
documentary value. It is a bit the opposite of what usually happens, no longer the existing
structures goes to the museum, but the museum is going to the existing structures,
particularly to the archaeological sites. Continuing to worry about and take care of two things
for which the museum worries and occupies: to conserve, but at the same time using the
property as a tool for the dissemination of culture, history and identity. Preserve, without
neglecting the museum component, understood as reading the message through the vision.
The research I lead at the Politecnico di Milano, "Prototyped system for the
musealization and protection of archaeological excavation" is linked to this context.
The research aims is studying systems useful to the archaeologists, first of all, at the
time of the excavation. From lightweight cover systems moving with the advance of the
archaeological yard, to structures that host field laboratories and systems for a display in
situ and for the use of the excavation by the visitor.
The purpose is just to see the excavation and archaeological investigations as
narrative and teaching experience where archaeologists are active actors.
A theoretical example of this approach is given by Andrea Carandini15 that returns us
Stories from the Earth the picture of an ideal digging understood as a open laboratory to the
visitors (img.7), a little bit what is happening today in Pompeii for house of the Chaste
Lovers, designed just like an archaeological yard, a laboratory, an event.
14 Vincenzo Latina (Floridia, Siracusa 1964) is one of the exponents of contemporary Italian architecture. He graduated in
1989 in Architecture at the IUAV , Venice under the supervision of Francesco Venezia, (Lauro, Avellino 1944) another
leading exponents of Italian archtecture. This project was his Master Thesis. The project of a pavilion of access to
Artemision excavations, after 25 years of waiting, finds its realization. This Project received the Gold Medal for Italian
Architecture in 2012.
15 Andrea Carandini (Rome, 1937) is one of the most important Italian Achaeologist. His archaeological findings are
important for the reconstruction of the early stages of the city of Rome.
40
The quality that systems yearn for, and whom the research tries to define is a precise
design of the piece, its industrial reproducibility, standardization, ease of installation and
assembly.
In this sense, a first search occasion was the Master Thesis, when I studied a first
attempt applied precisely to the Syracuse area.
The Museum of the Excavations is a machine to display, enjoy and watch. An
inhabited coverage, as activities related to the reading and interpretation of the fragments.
The archaeological excavation becomes a didactic experience.
The site of the project is next to the Archaeological complex of the Neapolis district.
In an adjacent area, it used as leisure, were carried out of the excavations and the
remains of a Roman road were found. The Museum of the Excavations covering the length
of the Roman road (img.8) and consists of two galleries. The open gallery is the space of the
tread, the cover gallery is the place where the findings of the archaeological site are
exhibited. Before being exposed, however, they must be cleaned and catalogued. For this
reason there is a laboratory. It is a display case, so the archaeologist's work is itself the
subject exposed. In the yard, rationalized according to the archaeological discipline, there
are mobile lightweight structures, covering the archaeologist during excavation.
Both the complex structure of the museum, and one of the trestles, is made from the
simplest elements, standardized, which dry assembled in different ways construct different
spaces. The structure is dry assembled because in archaeological areas is normally operated
in a reversible way. The work of the French Jean Prouvé and Italians Angelo Mangiarotti
and Renzo Piano has been a valuable reference and suggestion.
The idea of the Doctoral Research proposal is to establish a true prototype that can
operate in any archaeological excavation. To do this it would be necessary to know and
evaluate the characteristics of the excavations in progress consequently of their needs to be
able to give an appropriate response that meets the needs.
References
1. Agnello G., 1952, L’Architettura bizantina in Sicilia, Firenze

2. Agnello G., 1996, Il duomo di Siracusa e i suoi restauri, Siracusa
3. Carandini A., 1991, Storie dalla terra, Torino: Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi.
4. D'Erchia A., Pisani M., 2014, “Museo degli scavi a Siracusa. Ipotesi per la
valorizzazione della memoria dei luoghi e protezione dei siti archeologici”, Per un’
idea di museo. 15 progetti di laurea per Milano e Siracusa, eds M. Ferrari, Parma:
MUP Editore.
5. Ferrari M., 2012, “Ingresso agli scavi del Tempio Ionico – Siracusa”, Casabella n814:
88-96.
6. Martì Arìs C.,1990, Le Variazioni dell’identità. Il tipo in architettura, Milano: CLUP.
7. Maffioletti S., 2009, Il pentagramma di Rogers. Lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N.
Rogers, Padova: ed. Il Poligrafo.
8. Meuris J., 2009, Magritte, Koln: Tashen Gmbh.
41
9. Rossi A., 1981, A Scientific Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT

press
10. Sgariglia S., 2011, L’Athenaion di Siracusa. Una lettura stratigrafica tra storia e
segni, Siracusa: ed. Letteraventidue.
42
A NARRATIVE OF DISPLACEMENT: THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF FEW
ARMENIAN CLANS IN BULGARIA
Georgeta Nazarska
Sevo Yavashchev
This paper analyzes the contents of the unpublished manuscript, competed in 1989
and preserved in a private archive to the heirs of Dr. Magardich Melkonyan from the town
of Bourgas. On 124 pages, using oral memories of his parents, the author describes the story
of these four clans of maternal and paternal line from which he originates.
The text detailing the migrations (marital, family-based, labour, educational, and
forced) of relatives from the Asia Minor and the Eastern Thrace to Bourgas and Plovdiv in
Bulgaria, their refugee integration strategies, their way of life in the new places, and the ways
to preserve their ethnic identity. A particular emphasis is put on the Genocide, carried out
by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians, which effects ordinary people. The manuscript
contents also a short history of Armenians and several family trees.
The manuscript is analyzed from the perspective of genealogy and prosopography, of
social history, of demography, and of cultural and diasporic studies. The analysis is
supplemented by an interview with a heir of the family that specifies the details of the design
of the manuscript, provides information on its distribution among clan’s branches since
1989, and with photographs.
Armenians in Bulgaria
Armenians in Bulgaria are small ethnic and religious community formed in the Late
Antiquity by settlers and immigrants who arrived in several waves: since the Hamidian
massacres (1894-1896) carried out by the Ottoman Empire in the country arrived around
20.000 Armenians. In 1913 and 1922, as a result of ethnic cleansing in the Eastern Thrace
and the Asia Minor, 27.322 Armenians were crossing Bulgarian border as refugees. A small
number of Armenians immigrated in the 1990s. In 1946 a lot of Armenians emigrated in the
USSR by appeal to return in their homeland. In 1965-1968, by a special agreement with the
UN, about 5000 Armenians left Bulgaria and settled in the USA (Vasileva 1991a: 70; Vasileva
1991b: 155-157).
Today the community consists of 6552 members (0.1% of Bulgarian population). The
Armenians are living in the Bulgarian cities along the Danube River, on the Black Sea coast
and in the Thracian Valley. In the past, they were engaged mainly in handicrafts and trade,
but many immigrants from recent waves became workers (Ovnanyan 1972: 54, 192-193,
204). Currently, the Armenians are dealing with the liberal professions such as law and
medicine, and are occupied positions in many cultural institutions. The Armenian
community in Bulgaria keeps its ethnic and religious identity through churches, schools,
community centers, libraries, theaters, orchestras, choirs, periodicals and various cultural
and sports societies (Mitseva 2001: 127-141; Zanov 2003; Istoria no year).
43
Part 1 Georgeta Nazarska, Sevo Yavashchev A Narrative of Displacement…
History, Structure and Archaeographic Specifics of the Manuscript
The unpublished manuscript is completed in 1989 and preserved by the heirs of Dr.
Melkonyan (1922-2009)16. The author was born in Bourgas, studied at an Armenian primary
school, and graduated from a Bulgarian elementary school and evening vocational school.
At 14 years of age he became a private shoemaker, he was later a craftsman at a labour and
manufacturing cooperation and a worker at the Wagon factory. He graduated from an
evening high school and the Medical Faculty in Varna. In 1957-1971 he was a physician in
the villages of Goritsa and Bogdanovo, and after 1971 – at the Bourgas Transport hospital.
He had a pronounced interest in Armenian’s diaspora history. According to his nephew, he
wrote a study of Armenians in Bourgas published in the 1980's (Interview 2016a).
The manuscript consists of 124 pages and includes a brief history of the Armenian
people followed by a detailed narration of the history of the three clans of the maternal and
paternal line he originates from. The manuscript ends with several genealogical charts.
The text is a manuscript written in Dr. Melkonyan's own hand in a hard-cover school
notebook in good Bulgarian language with a pen and passages underlined with a marker,
paginated from page 32 onwards, provided with a reference tool. There are no footnotes in
the text and no entries are found in Armenian language.
The manuscript is prepared on the basis of oral evidences of the author's elderly
parents Stepan Melkonyan (1885-1966) and Verkine Melkonyan (1894-1969), collected
through special interviews in 1962, when their memory was still good. Besides the oral
statements, the author also uses various sources: official documents and private
correspondence of family members published in the Yerevan newspaper (1985); the author's
own observations during visits to Yerevan (1967) and from Bourgas, which he compares to
his parents' memories or supplements them.
There are no evidences of the existence of a similar manuscript in the family, to be
used as a basis for writing the family chronicles. Generally, memories were transferred
mostly through oral narrations and through older people's stories (Interview 2016a).
Family History, Micro-History, and Migrations
The manuscript details the history of several families that the author originates from.
The resources of genealogy, prosopography and micro history allow preparing not only
genealogical charts, but also analyzing migrations in detail.
The first clan on the maternal line was the Sarkisiyans. Its ancestors were original
residents of the cities Gelibolu (Gallipoli) and Tekirdag (Rodosto) in the Eastern Thrace,
where Armenian population settled in the 17th century and spoke both Armenian and
Turkish. There, they lived together with Bulgarians, Turks and Greeks. A very large
Armenian enclave lived in the city of Malkara (close to Tekirdag) (Malgara 2014).
The founders of the Sarkisiyans were Sarkis Harlaner and Hudtsi Kadin, who had
three children. One of them, Artin Sarkisiyan, was a farmer, field guard, and goods delivery
man. During the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) the village became a center of military operations
16We would like to thank of Mr. Artin Garabedyan for his kind permission to study the manuscript and to publish the
private archive’s photographs.
44
between Bulgarian and Ottoman troops. Fearing ethnic and religious oppression, after the
re-occupation of the Eastern Thrace by Ottoman troops after the Second Balkan War (1913),
Bulgarians and many Armenians from Eastern Thrace immigrated to Bulgaria. Families of
Artin and of his brother also left their property and were settled in Plovdiv. Men started
working as phaeton drivers and workers at tobacco stores.
The second clan on the maternal line was the Kalfiyans. It originates from the village
of Biga (on the Marmara Sea coast), where a significant number of Armenian villages were
situated, but Armenians there spoke, beside their mother tongue, also the Turkish language.
The founder of the family was Nichogos Kalfiyan – a farmer, mason and wood-worker, who
after a fire relocated together with his family to Malkara – a city populated by Turks and
Armenians. From Nichogos's second marriage was born Antarak, grandmother of the
author, Dr. Melkonyan.
This chapter of the manuscript follows in greater detail the destiny of her brother
Artin Kalfiyan, a wood-worker in Malkara, who, during the Greco-Turkish War (1921-1922)
initially relocated together with his family to Edirne and later to Greece and Bulgaria. In
Bourgas he stayed with his sister and began practicing his wood-working craft.
The third clan in the paternal line was the Melkonyans-Avakyans. It originates from
the city of Muş, to the west of the Van Lake, in the 18th century and is linked to the
predecessor Bachdig. Its creators were born in the nearby of villages Artchong and Artert,
where Armenians lived mixed with the Kurds until 1915.
One of the members of the clan, Musheh Chaush (Ḉavus), was among the few literate
people in the village and worked as a clerk. In 1887-1890, he was briefly in Batumi (Russia),
and later returned to the village, but in 1894 departed to work in Istanbul. Scared by the
Hamidian massacres (1894-1896) he moved to Greece, where he took part in the digging of
the Corinth Canal. In 1896, he arrived in Bourgas and joined the construction of the sea port,
later working at grain export companies.
During the Genocide, most of the family's members living in the vicinity of the city of
Mus perished: 12 of the family members in the village of Arikchvank were murdered and
burnt, 3 women went missing.
A third man from the family survived – Stepan, son of Melkon (1885-1966). After the
Young Turk Revolution (1908), the 24-year-old youth walked the road from his native village
to Trabzon, then reached Istanbul by ship, and then got to Bourgas by land. In 1912 he
enlisted in the Armenian battalion of the Macedonian- Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps led
by the future General Andranik Ozanian and Garegin Nzhdeh. With it, he reached Tekirdag.
After the end of the War in 1914, Stepan decided to move to work in the USA, but was
arrested in Edirne on the way. As a prisoner, Stepan worked on various sites in the Asia
Minor, from where he managed to escape. In Anatolia, he remained illegal until 1918.
After he lost his entire family during the Genocide, Stepan decided to remain in
Bulgaria. In 1920, he married Verkine Sarkisyan from Plovdiv (1894-1969). Besides working
as a port worker, he supplemented his income from private farming in the vicinity of
Bourgas.
His son, Dr. Magardich Melkonyan (1922-2009), completed his higher educated and
became a physician. He married an Armenian woman and brought up his two daughters in
Bourgas. His daughter Yehisapet Melkonyan (1923-2011) completed her secondary
education in Bourgas and worked there as a seamstress and a worker in a cardboard
workshop. She married and moved to live in Sliven, where she brought up her three children.
45
After the mother-in-law's death (1956), the family returned to Bourgas. The son, Haryutyun
(Artin) (1928-?), completed his secondary education and earned a living as a tinsmith in his
native city. He later became a mine-worker in the town of Sliven.
The manuscript does not detail the life story of Chripsime Melkonyan-Garabedyan
(1927). According to her son's oral interview and the documents from the private family
archive, presented to us, she completed secondary school in Bourgas (1942) and married a
shoemaker in Khaskovo (Interview 2016a).
Typology of Migrations
When analyzing the manuscript from the point of view of migration theory, it is found
that the described clans perform intensive migrations of various types.
Marriage migrations were targeted (one-way) up to the mid-20th century. They were
implemented by the women in the families at the bidding of their parents and husbands. In
the 1960-1970s, there were examples of marriage migrations performed after educational or
labour migrations.
Family-based migrations were very characteristic for the described clans. They were
aimed at joining the extended family households and mutual support of their members in
the event of widowing, orphan hood or performing migrations. In the spirit of patriarchal
tradition, grandchildren often cared for their grandparents, and children for their parents.
Educational (student) migrations were too rarely represented within the manuscript.
This is explained, on the one hand, by the agricultural or artisan means of livelihood of the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire until their migration to Bulgaria, and, on the other hand,
by their marginal status of immigrants without citizenship and with the Nansen Passports
in their new homeland17.
Men in the clans worked more as wood-workers, shoemakers, coffee-shop owners,
miners, tinsmiths, dockers, workers, i.e. they inherited old professions or performed
unqualified labour which did not require specific education. Women in the families were
either housewives taking care of the home, children, and family property, or the younger
ones were occupied as seamstresses, telephone girls, workers. It is only in the 1950-1980s
that representatives of the families performed educational migrations within Bulgaria.
Labour migrations are often commented upon in the manuscript, provoked by the
extensive agriculture in the Asia Minor or various political events: the Young Turk
Revolution and the Second Constitutional Era (the Hurriyet, 1909), the Balkan Wars, the
World War I, the Greco-Turkish War (1921-1922). Labour migrations in the 18-19th
centuries are described as circulating either around the home villages with the aim of
learning a craft or serving18, or to farther destinations such as Istanbul, Bourgas and even
the United States to work abroad. In the 19th-20th century men from the families performed
targeted labour migrations as a result of searching for means of life for their entire families
after natural disasters or accidents19.
Educational migrations performed Avak Melkonyan, who went from Muş to Echmiadzin to study for cleric, and
17
Magardich Melkonyan and Chrispime Kalfiyan, who migrate in the 1950-1970s from Bourgas to Varna to study medicine.
Artin Sarkissyan was working as an assistant in the villages around Malkara.

18
The farmer Nichogos Kalfiyan moved from Biga to Malkara and the slipper craftsman Feschiyan moved from Plovdiv to
19
Karlovo after the Chirpan earthquake (1928).

46
The most commonly repeated pattern in the manuscript are the forced (political)
migrations, which are generally targeted and one-way. In the 19th century, they were linked
to temporary crises in the relationships of Armenians with their neighboring Kurds and to
the first Genocide20. In the 20th century, the main motive for the emigration of Armenians
and their families were political events in the Ottoman Empire21.
Forced (political) migrations affected entire families and clans, which need to
completely change their way of life. At the center of these migrations was the trauma from
the Genocide, which tore people out of their native lands and their traditional professions,
and obliterated most of the clans’ members.
Immigration Strategies: a Socio-Demographical Analysis
Dr. Melkonyan's manuscript can also be analyzed from the perspective of social
demography. Thus, it provides information of the ways of social adaptation of the Armenian
diaspora.
At a first glance, representatives of the three clans described fit within the so-called
Eastern European marriage pattern described by John Hajnal and localized eastwards of the
Trieste – St.-Petersburg line (Hajnal 1965). Within it, the universal marriage was
dominating. Unmarried clans’ members were a rarity. They were mainly men who become
householders only if they live with their old parents or underage sisters and brothers.
Widows and widowers also represented a very small percentage. Widows in middle age
continued to live with their daughters and sons. Divorces were an exception for both
genders.
The average age of marriage, however, was too high in comparison to that of settled
the Armenians in Bulgaria: 34 years of age for men and 22.8 years for women. This is a sign
of deviation from the Eastern European marriage pattern and approaching indicators
corresponding to the Western-European marriage pattern, probably due to migrations.
Within the described clans, up to the 1950s, marriages were entirely endogamy (in-
marriages). Marital choice was within the same village, region or country. In 1953 this model
was broken and exogamy (out-marriages, mixed marriages) emerged – first by the Armenian
men, and in the 1980s, also by women. Children from such marriages also married to non-
Armenians.
Within the traditional Eastern European marriage pattern, the main purpose of
cohabitation was bearing children – a large number and shortly after entering the marriage.
Practices in the described Armenian clans are more similar to the Western-European
marriage pattern: the mean age of mother at her first birth was 26 years (which is a sign of
shifting reproductivity to a later age), and average number of children was 3.6.
Armenian family households were formed patrilocal and rarely neolocal, whereas
nuclear and extended family households predominated. This gives grounds for classification
20In the 1890s Musheh Chavush escaped from Istanbul to Greece and Bourgas.
21To avoid a recruitment, in 1909 Stepan Melkonyan left his native village and join his uncle in Bourgas. As a volunteer in
the Armenian battalion of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Voluntary Corps during the Balkan Wars he reached Tekirdag
and Macedonia. In 1915-1918, as a prisoner, he had been working across the country. After the Second Balkan War,
threatened by the Genocide, Artin and Bagram Sarkisyan emigrated from Edirne in Plovdiv, leaving all possessions;
Yehisapet Sarkisyan moved from Uzunkopru to Plovdiv where were living her parents. In 1922, during the last phase of the
Genocide, the family of Artin Kalfiyan left Edirne and run through Greece to Bourgas to be nearby his sister. At the same
time Rupen Avakyan survived his relatives, killed and burned in his native village, escaping in Aleksandropol (Russia).
47
of the urban Armenian family household within the Western-European marriage pattern. In
extended households, the married couple and its children lived together with several close
relatives (mother, mother-in-law, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister,
nephew, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law). Sometimes divorced daughters
returned to live in them. This was dictated by the patriarchal tradition obliging young people
to care for the elderly. Similar relationships were observed also between partners: men
dominated in the family hierarchy and were decision-makers, including those on migration.
Women were predominantly housewives depending on the income of their grown-
up children or work from home. They followed the patriarchal model, taking care of the
home and bringing up children. However, some began to participate in the labour market.
In the 1930-1940s, they worked as seamstresses, workers and telephone operators, and in
the 1960-1980s, as dental technicians and physicians.
Male immigrants did not keep the professions which exercised in their homelands. In
Bulgaria, they swapped rural with urban professions and became a part of the lower middle-
class and of the working class: wood-workers, shoemakers, coffee-shop owners, tinsmiths,
constructors, sailors, workers, dockers, electricians, miners, etc.
It is noted in the manuscript that the educational status of generations improves
within the family. The first and second generations were illiterate, but the third and fourth
generations graduated primary and secondary schools, and even universities. Despite this,
immigrants were not among Bulgaria's intellectual elite. The need to work and to earn a
living deprived many of them of higher education.
Living in a receiver country, the Armenian immigrants from the three clans made
significant efforts to preserve their ethnic and religious identity. They observed traditional
Armenian personal names related to their ancestors and Christian saints-patrons. The most
common male names were: Avak, Artin, Chrant, Melkon, Magardich, and Nichogos, and
female: Yehisapet, Chripsime, Manig, and Chazal. Naming was usually after grandfathers,
grandmothers, aunts, and uncles. Non-Armenian names were not present up to the 1980s,
when mixed marriages emerged. Family names also followed traditional forming with an -
yan ending. The second mechanism of preserving identity was the mother tongue and even
vernaculars, performing songs, telling stories, riddles and legends. Kurdish was also spoken
in some of the clans. The language was studied in primary schools, which children from the
Melkonyans attended up until their closing in 1961. Religion also preserved the ethnic
identity. All Armenian children were baptized in a church by Armenian godfathers.
The role of various institutions is also described as a prominent factor. The
manuscript does not detail Armenian organizations, but there is an emphasis on the
Armenian battalion during the Balkan War and the contacts that its participants maintained
up until the 1930s through meetings and celebrating anniversaries.
Migrations in the Clan’s Collective Memory
Dr. Melkonyan's manuscript is an exception in the practice of Armenians in Bulgaria.

Written narratives are not popular among them, but oral narrations of the Genocide and the
escape from it, named memorates, are popular (Mitseva 2001). Our respondent Artin
Garabedyan confirms that all old people in the clans had told many times orally the
tribulations they survived. Therefore, he believes that the information preserved by Dr.
48
Melkonyan in the clans’ chronicle accurately reflects the memories of eyewitnesses and is a
reliable source even though it is based on oral history (Interview 2016a).
Armenians in Bulgaria rarely compose written family genealogies. If they exist, they
are kept within the families and are not distributed (Interview 2016b; Hadzholyan 2010).
Dr. Melkonyan acts in a similar manner: he made four copies of the text and handed the
remaining three to his brother and two sisters. His aim was for the genealogy to be
supplemented by the living heirs. So far, there is no evidence that this has been done. Those
living in Khaskovo only plan to do this (Interview 2016a).
The idea to compose a genealogy was both a satisfaction of the author Melkonyan's
internal demand, and a non-standard decision of an educated man in order to awake
national identity and respect for ancestral memory. Although they have not so far
supplemented the data in the manuscript, heirs of the Melkonyans keep the chronicle, as
well as many documents and photographs, in their private family archives.
It is no surprise that when having an interview on the manuscript, our respondent
was provoked to also tell the story of the Garabedyans, his father's clan, originating from
Ḉorlu and Tekirdag. The oldest representatives of the clan were involved in inn-keeping.
During the World War I, the family emigrated without its belongings to Istanbul and later
by train to Bulgaria. At the Rakovski station (today's town of Dimitrovgrad) a part of the
children got lost. Years later, the sisters and brothers living in Sliven, Istanbul, Varna and
Bourgas sought each other via the Armenian organization. Part of them was hosted in
Khaskovo, in the local barracks. Although they stayed to live in the city, Armenian refugees
from the Garabedyans had no Bulgarian citizenship, but received the Nansen Passports.
Initially they began working at a restaurant, and the wife, after losing her husband, became
a tobacco worker (Interview 2016a).
The Manuscript in “Diasporic Social Field”
Diaspora studies link migration theories to those of Pierre Bourdieu on the “social
field” and “social capital”. Thus, term such as “diasporic field” is created: a social reality
which is constructed continuously as a struggle of cultural practices between the diaspora
bearing the perception of an imaginary homeland, its cultural heritage and “symbolic
capital”, and the host country/society generally wishing for some type of cultural integration
of immigrants (assimilation etc.). In the antagonism various modes of power relationships
are formed, in which “diasporic identity“ may be preserved only if it is legitimized and
maintained by the “diasporic (symbolic) capital” (Tsagarousianou 2004; Chiang 2010).
Viewed from this perspective, Dr. Melkonyan's manuscript represents a part of the
“diasporic capital“, which the Armenian diaspora created in order to preserve itself and
socially construct its perception of the homeland (in the abandoned homelands around the
Van Lake and in the Eastern Thrace). This perception – in this case associated with clan’
origins – should become a ”spiritual and imaginary center“, which would replace the
homeland in the host country, numbing the trauma from the Genocide and relocation,
compensating the memory of its loss and forming a “psychological return“.
49
Conclusion
In his manuscript Dr. Melkonyan follows the traditional structure of genealogies and
historical chronicles: he first portrays Armenians as a people, and then he describes
individual families he originates from. He keeps the requirement toward such works, so he
does not overwhelm with details and undue psychologism. Meanwhile, however, although
adhering to best foreign practices, Melkonyan combines them with the memorate – a
traditional genre in Armenian epos telling about the Genocide and its consequences. In this
respect, he creates a text of mixed genre specifics.
In his manuscript, an attempt at micro history, the author puts an emphasis on the
clan and family as social structures, the paternal line, and the activities and life stories of
men. His attention is not turned to the social life of Armenians and their associations,
schools, and reading-rooms, to their relationships with the Bulgarians or to biographies of
women. It also does not treat the following: processes of assimilation occurring among the
Armenian community after 1944 under pressure from the Bulgarian state; dissolution of the
Armenian organizations and termination of several periodicals in the late 1940s and early
1950s; their emigration to the USSR and the USA in the 1940s and the 1960s; closing of the
Armenian schools in the 1950s; destruction of the Armenian districts and churches in the
cities in the 1960-1970s; mass prevalence of mixed marriages.
The manuscript is an interesting panorama of few Armenian clans, tracing their
migrations and offering an in-depth section of the social structure of the Armenian society.
It is a valuable source on the history of small religious and ethnic communities in Bulgaria.
Although unpublished, the manuscript occupies a place of importance within family’s
collective memory, and over the years it serves as a reference and starting point for reflection
on the younger generations.
References
1. Chiang Ch.-Y., 2010, “Diasporic Theorizing Paradigm on Cultural Identity”,

Intercultural Communication Studies, 19 (1), 29-46.
2. Hadzholyan M., 2010, Armenski rodove v grad Varna, Varna: Steno.
3. Hajnal J., 1965, “European marriage patterns in perspective”, eds. D. V. Glass and D.
E. C. Eversley, Population in History. Essays in Historical Demography, London,
101-143.
4. Interview with Artin Garabedyan, 2016a, Khaskovo, 1.08.2016, 22.08.2016, Private
archive of Sevo Yavashchev.
5. Interview with Masis Hadzholyan, 2016b, lawyer and historian, Varna, 16.09.2016,
Private archive of Georgeta Nazarska.
6. Istoriia na armentsite v Haskovo [A History of Armenians in Khaskovo], no data,
Haskovo: Surp Stepanos.
7. Malgara. Letopis za zhivota na armencite 1610-1922 [Malkara. A Chrinicle of
Armenians’ Life, 1610-1922], 2014, eds. H. Chalgadzhiyan and Hr. Erniasian, Sofia:
Erevan.
8. Mitseva E., 2001, Armentsite v Balgaria – kultura I identichnost [Armenians in
Bulgaria – Culture and Identity] Sofia: IMIR.
50
9. Ovnanyan S. V., 1972, Armeno-balgarski istoricheski vrazki i armenskite kolonii v

Balgaria prez vtorata polovina na 19 vek [Armenian-Bulgarian Historical
Relationships and the Armenian Diaspora in Bulgaria in the Second Half of the 19 th
Century], Sofia: Nauka I izkustvo.
10. Tsagarousianou R., 2004, “Rethinking the Concept of Diaspora: Mobility,
Connectivity and Communication in a Globalised World”, Westminster Papers in
Communication and Culture, 1 (1), 52-66.
11. Vasileva B., 1991a, “Migracii i politika v godini na prehod” [Migrations and Politics in
Transition Period], Utopiia i realnost, D. Ludzhev, B. Vasileva and I. Baeva, Sofia:
Universitetsko izdatelstvo, 65-75.
12. Vasileva B., 1991b, Migratsionni protsesi v Balgaria sled Vtorata svetovna voyna
[Migration Processes in Bulgaria after the WW2], Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo.
13. Zanov I., 2003, Armentsite v Silistra. Minalo i savremennost [Armenians in the
Town of Silstra], Silistra: RITT.
Appendix
Photo 1
Dr. Magardich Melkonyan (1922-2009). Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.
Photo 2
51
The manuscript. Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.
Photo 3
Stepan Melkonyan (1885-1966). Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.
Family tree 1
The Sarkisyans
52
Family tree 2
The Kalfiyans
Family tree 3
The Avakyans- Melkonyans
53
54
SPACE BOUNDED MEMORY: PALACE OR THEATRE
Saime Gümüştaş
Hande Asar
Today, memory can be discussed in the context of many disciplines such as neurology,
sociology, psychology, and architecture. Each of them approach memory in various ways.
Hence, it is assessed through various subheadings such as being short or long term,
individual- social-cultural, declarative-procedural of memory. Therefore, we will firstly
mention some answers of” What is the memory?”.
As Aristotle mentioned, memory is a notion related to the past. In other words,

memory is about something remembering from past. Augustinus, who was one of the
representatives of the most important memory opinion in the Middle Ages, considers the
memory as a subject of history. According to him, the memory means going back in time
(Ricoeur, 2012: 115).
When we look at the Cambridge Philosophy Dictionary, memory is defined as the
retention of, or the capacity to retain, past experience or previously acquired information.
There are two main philosophical questions about memory: (1) In what does memory
consist? and (2) What constitutes knowing a fact on the basis of memory? Not all memory
is remembering facts: there is remembering one’s perceiving or feeling or acting in a certain
way – which, while it entails remembering the fact that one did experience in that way, must
be more than that. And not all remembering of facts is knowledge of facts: an extremely
hesitant attempt to remember an address, if one gets it right, counts as remembering the
address even if one is too uncertain for this to count as knowing it (Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosphy, 1995). Other definitions mostly describe memory through metaphors. Platon:
Memory is like a part of wax. It is soft in some people and they get the impressions easily.
But it is firmer as for some people and they couldn’t keep it in mind quite a long time. Here,
it is considered that Platon explains short and long term memory with wax metaphor. Freud:
He used a ‘jigsaw puzzle pad’ metaphor for memory because even if there is no memory mark
on the surface there are some memory layers on the below which are impossible to delete
indeed. Carus illustrates memory as a large maze (Draaisme, 2007: 21-28). When it is looked
at the all these definitions, is it possible to say that the metaphor is also a memory?
People using the metaphor have kept their memory with powerful images to reflect
hidden processes the information is transmitted to the memory in their environment
(Draaisme, 2007: 21-28). In this case, metaphors have the power reviving power sensations,
experiences and perceptions. In addition, they replace the memory because they achieve to
store something permanently in the memory. And so, is memory a tool that has only to revive
power here?
Whether the memory does not only have the power of revive, we understand from
Richter's these words: memory is not only a simple tool stimulating the process of thinking
but also a place, which enables the thinking process (2000: 43). In this case, should the
memory of place or else place of memory be mentioned? But firstly what kind of a memory
are we talking about?
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Part 1 Saime Gümüştaş, Hande Asar Space Bounded Memory…
When thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Augustinus, Cicero are considered, the concept of
memory is discussed as the individual memory. The idea that memory is not only individual
talent but also determined by society has taken place in Halbwachs’ (1925, 1941, 1950) study.
According to Halbwachs much as memory sometimes refers to “an individual

recall”, it is always formed by social code (1992: 52-53). Memory is a collective
creation produced by society and so this formation must be named as “collective
memory”. To Halbwachs, the individual memory in which the form Freud and
Bergson’s discuss cannot be described without social and physical environment
which the individual in. Memory is a social, collective production in any case (Çalak,
2012: 34).
In this case, even if memory evaluated in two main titles including individual and
collective memory, they essentially fed from and affect each other. In which situations do
these effect states become visible or have they become visible? How can we discuss this
visibility via the ‘space’? In this context, should it be talked about the memory of place or the
place of memory?
Space is one of the significant factors affecting recall due to the physical reality. It
takes a very large place both individual memory and collective memory to mention memory
of space because space has created itself with time and subjects. However; space of memory
is more about abstract reality. But still this abstract state is discussed via tangible
representations. So, this article is going to be focused on space of memory.
For this, we choose two examples: a part of Sherlock Holmes’ TV series (mind palace
part) and Simon Critchley’s Memory Theatre. This article will examine these two examples
by comparing each other in terms of abstract/ physical space of memory. So, the main
question is “How does memory reach a visual language?” It is going to be dealt with the
relationship of memory, space and time via this question in the next section. It will be a case-
study through space-time-memory relationship. In the conclusion part, it will be done an
assessment about how to be a place of memory tracing this comparison.
MEMORYSPACETIME22
First of all, when the memory and space relationship is observed, there is a
relationship type feeding each other. Space exists with time. So, it can be said that space and
memory is interdependent. For the purposes of this article the term will be referred as
“memoryspacetime”.
When we look at the relation between memory and space, as Halbwachs mentioned
that memory needs space (1992: 52). The relation with memory and space is established
when the concrete space holds the abstract memory. This holding is transiently in a
continuous creation in everyday life. This creation itself reflects to memory as recollection.
Recollections create themselves with recall. Memory is structured with “remembering”.
22Memory, space and time are not considered as independent concepts. These concepts are considered as complementary
concepts. For this reason, they are expressed in the article as "memoryspacetime" to emphasize that they cannot be taken
separately.
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There are some approaches to relation between memory and remembering. Some of
them have been indicated in this article. For instance, according to Bergson; remembrance
is an acquisition that the body breaks off from the present and primarily goes to the past and
then a certain time of the past (2007: 101). Huyssen also human memory is seen as an
anthropological data getting its source from past (1999:12). Therefore, glances are turned
backward to evaluate and see where the society or individual stand in course of time (1999:
11). So, memory relationship with time is linked directly with various abstract situations
such as recollection- (not) remember-celebration.
Mircea Eliade addresses that all kinds of recall are significant in terms of “going out
of the historical moment”. This going out of the historical moment becomes distant the
individual’s own historical moment. This past that individual thrown is different from
historical background. It is a time that is a source of both present time and past continuous
time (Yalçınkaya, 2005: 230). According to Augustinus, the memory is the place where
consciousness has the root tie with the past. To him, time is connected to memory towards
two directions first going towards from future to past and the second from future to past
anticipating to capture the moment (Ricoeur, 2012: 115). Hence, memory is time-wise and
it advances in the past, present and future continuity, but remembrance always takes place
in the present.
Memory is a living organism and is active. Remembrance is not simply calling from
the past. Every remembrance reinterprets the past (sensory components, decreases,
adding), builds and makes sense again. Recall mechanism always takes action with a special
reason. It evokes such reasons; if experienced in the past is positive, it is recalled to be happy
with it; if it is negative, it is recalled to settle and face with it.
Remembering enhances the level of consciousness of an object or an event which are
the part of the past by using the individual’s memory by making a conscious effort. This
ability of recall is memory. If the memory is related to psychological life of reminiscent
subject, this is called as "introspective memory". On the other hand, if remembrance of
subject is related to the objects independent of the mind, it is called as “receptive memory”.
Yet, it is not sufficient classify to memory type only as introspective and receptive memory.
While Ricoeur expresses introspection status via Augustinus, John Locke and
Husserl, Ricoeur expresses receptive memory via Halbwalchs. He clarifies introspection
memory via more than personal memory while he states receptive memory as collective
memory. However here as also Ricouer asks, the basic question may be “whose memory?”
question. Can individual memory be isolated from the collective memory? The samples
examined in the content of this research are not independent from the collective memory
even if it may seem as focused on individual memory at first glance. Each individual has
created his own real/virtual memory space in his social and cultural context. Therefore, it is
firstly essential to mention on the relationship of spaces with the memory. Here, the main
problematic has focused on space of memory.
Memory surely holds a space or a place. In the interpretation of Benjamin about the
memory, it is stated that memory is not only a space of individual but also it is a place or
places retaining the individual (1995: 87). Nevertheless, living in a place is marking there
and these marks are highlighted interior. These mark both forms the space and space
consists again because of these marks. This again and circular being situation allows the
space of memory. Because of that, spaces of memory in memory formation have many
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dimensions and they are important meeting places. “Adapting the individuality to
community, subconscious, symbolization, moving the social domain is possible with space
of memory. Memory is important to provide a framework rather than content.” (Nora, 2006:
10).
Spaces of memory may take this call when they are associated with physical space, a
narrative, a ritual or a symbol. In this context, the narrative and symbol can be described
and may correlate with framing state, which Nora also mentions. However, this frame does
not draw a rigid boundary. Because memory is a meeting ground and an area of hybridity -
slips beyond the established limits. It establishes itself via networks/connections. It has a lot
of opportunities to resolve the old connections or to build new connections. So, it can be said
that memory is flexible. This flexibility enables temporal transitions, traces and experiences.
This trace shows itself quite extensively even today, besides it extends from antiquity. In the
scope of this research, it can be said that there are two different approach for memory-space
relation; the first one is memory theatre and the second one is memory palace. Therefore, it
can be started firstly with the story of Simonides (memory-theatre approach) in the
foundation memory association with something forming the common denominator in both
cases. According to the story, one day the poet Simonides of Ceos was invited a dinner and
started to sing a song there. At one stage he left from there, the dining-chamber collapsed
on the host and all of his guests, and caused their death. After this event, the kinfolks of
victims were not able to identify the bodies to bury. At that point, Simonides noticed that he
was able to help them to find the bodies owing to his recollection of the exact places of all
guests just before the crash occurred (Yılmaz, 2010: 268).
In here, Simonides created a structure in the eye of the mind by establishing a
relationship with the physical space and he has associated this with the thing what he wants
to remember. In this context, the space of memory has been studied in two ways.
The first one is that virtually of the recall is the visibility through physicality of space.
This can be seen through the first ‘memory theatre’ example designed by Camillio. His
Memory Theatre was a wooden structure wide enough for at least two people to stand at the
same time. It is however a distortion of the plan of the real Vitruvian theatre. The stage of
the theatre was designed for the visitors to stand and watch the images placed on different
niches of the seven steps. On each of its seven gangways have seven gates or doors. These
gates are decorated with many images (Yates, 1966: 129-59) Yates writes about his “memory
theatre” which is a concept that expressed the metaphysical and supernatural beliefs with
which the memory arts had become saturated during the Middle Ages. After Camillio’s work,
numerous memory theatres were designed in the following years. They were used with the
memorization of particular subjects.
The second one is that virtual remembering fiction is completely created by making
virtual to physicality of space. “Memory palace” method can be shown as an example of this.
According to Ricci, there are three basic options about material fiction of memory palace.
These are; being generated from the truth, being entirely fictional and being half real half
fictitious (Spence, 1984: 1-2).
In the scope of this study, an examination has carried out via more recent examples
to discuss validity today instead of the first example about this subject. For that reason,
chosen examples are Simon Critchley’s “Memory Theatre” published in 2015 and Charles
Augustus Magnussen’s “Memory Palace”, who is a character of Sherlock TV series
broadcasted in 2014. On the one hand the memory corresponds with an abstract space with
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the information in mind as a spatial vitalization; on the other hand, the memory finds a
tangible spatial place with transformation by encoding information as a theatre space. This
study is going to trace dual status of memory like being abstract or tangible in the next
section, and seek an answer this study’s basic question of “How does memory reach a visual
language?” through these two examples.
PALACE or THEATRE
In the context of how the memory reaches a visual language the first example to be
dealt with is Critchley’s “Memory Theatre”. The story starts when the writer/character finds
six boxes, which belongs to his ex-teacher professor Michel who is dead. Different
philosophers come out from each box (Hegel, Platon, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Spinoza etc.)
and tell us about their doctrines for five minutes and then they all disappear. By this means,
we understand how Critchley forms his opinions and how his delusions start. Firstly,
Critchley understands Michel’s memory theatre opinion and model and then he pursues this
memory theatre idea. It is claimed that have been accessed to all kinds of information even
death time under favour of this recall art (Memory Theatre). One of the most important
incidents at this story is that in his past because of an accident he lost his three fingers
together with his memory’s three-week parts. The recall situation can be specified as a detail
that should not be overlooked. Therefore, maybe Critchley traces the boxes, which came
from Michel. After a while, Critchley moved from New York to Holland and then starts to
build his own memory theatre with the impact of the data of Critchley’s own memory
mapping card coming out of the box and the memory theatre model which is found in the
lost box. The story flows in this state is connected to a conclusion criticizing himself.
So, how does Critchley build his own memory theatre? Critchley who is overlooking 7
boxes, which comes from Michel, sees hints in the Pisces box in which he thought the
astrological chart. He finds biography cards that belong to 10 philosophers. The data on
these cards are written as a series of circles. All kinds of biographical data are written in the
outer circle. Philosophers’ studies and quotations from them are written chronologically
towards the centre of the circle. Date of death and sometimes cause of death is written when
it comes to centre of the circle. Here, memory map is actually discovered by Critchley. He
has also found his own astrological card in the same box (Image 1). Firstly, the box belonging
to the Taurus reached to Critchley on January 2008 and he found Camillo’s memory theatre
model (its shape is round, 40-45 cm diameter, 20 cm height, wood, amphitheatre with 7
suspended ladder and painted figures be found on these 7 suspended ladder) inside the box.
Michel builds Hegel’s phenomenology with reading theatre memory as the successor of
Yates. In the theatre memory Hegel places the subject onto the seats alone and makes them
to recall while Camillo places the subject on the stage in other words, he places the
reminiscent things onto the audience seats.
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Image 1: Critchley’s Astrological Card, Courtesy of Saime Gümüştaş and Hande Asar,
2016.
From this point of view Critchley starts building his own memory theatre model. The
small sculptures and constituents of life, family ties, friends and so on have been found on
the first place of Critchley’s memory theatre. Books and articles (short summary, sign,
symbol…etc.) he wrote on the second place, information about the history of philosophy on
the third, fourth and fifth place, trivial which has personal importance on the sixth place,
languages (French, German, Ancient Greek) on the seventh place have been found in the
memory theatre (Image 2). There are 49 pieces of sculpture made from wood pulp in the
wooden structure construction. Critchley completes the theatre in early 2010 and he starts
memorizing the information in the theatre. At this juncture, he tries to complete the gaps in
his memory. Then, he begins to wait for his death for June 13, the date written on the
memory card that Michel has prepared instead of him. The basic issue, remembering the
information in theatre, will be examined with the following example.
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Image 2: Critchley’s Memory Theatre, Courtesy of Saime Gümüştaş and Hande Asar,
2016.
The other example is about how the character of Magnussen build his “Memory
Palace” in Sherlock TV series’ 3. season 3. episode broadcasted in 2014. We see a space that
Magnussen wanders around at the first scene of the episode, which is examined in the video,
and all details of this space are seen. He reaches whatever he wants to get in this space. Has
this space a psychical reality the first time as we perceive? In this sense the episode continues
with a flow without any hesitation. However, the source of all information, which Magnussen
accessed, was sought with the character of Sherlock who is included in the events. After a
series of events, Sherlock and Watson want to reach to Magnussen’s cache named Appledore
to obtain secret information. Therefore, they go to Magnussen’s house. After a short
conservation Magnussen opens the door of Appledoor that they have been wondering. There
is an empty white room behind a wooden door and a chair standing in the middle of the
empty room. Magnussen says that it is here that all the information is kept hidden in the
granary. Then, he sits on the chair and says that:
Magnussen: Let me to show you the Appledore Vaults. The entrance is my vaults.
This is where I keep.
Watson: Ok. Where is the vault, then?
Magnussen: Vault? What vault? There is no vault in this building. They are all
in. The Appledore vaults are my mind palace. You know about mind palace, don’t you
Sherlock? How is the store information again never forgot by picturing it? I just sit here.
I close my eyes. And I go to my vaults. I go anywhere inside my vaults. My memories. I
will look at the files of Mrs.Watson. This is one of my favourites. I am so exciting. All
that bad jobs for CIA. Bad girl and so wicked. I can really see why you like her. You see?
Watson: So, there are no documents. You don’t actually have anything here?
Magnussen: Sometimes I want something if I need but mostly I just
remember at all.
Watson: I don’t understand.
Magnussen: You should have on it t-shirt.
Watson: You just remember at all?
Magnussen: It is all about knowledge. Everything is. Knowing owns.
(Sherlock TV Series 3.Season/3.Episode, 2014).
Magnussen starts a journey in his own memory palace at that moment. He goes down
from a spiral stair. Details are seen among the bookshelves when he descends the floor. He
reaches the filing fray by returning around the table where the scattered files and a woman
bust lay over there. He finds the document, which Sherlock wants, among the files and at
the same time he narrates information on the documents to Sherlock and Watson.
Meanwhile, Sherlock and Watson only see Magnussen's hand movement and gestures with
closed eyes. Gestures and mimic expressions gave clues where they found themselves in the
virtual environment. So, the reflection of chaotic space in his mind to that moment is only
these gestures and hand movements. After he reaches all the information, Magnussen closes
the document and returns to the physical reality thereby open his eyes. The main thing
Magnussen wants to show here is that he hasn’t a psychical space to reach what he wants;
he reaches the knowledge just using his memory.
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By associating the memory with space and place a memory house, palace or theatre
idea was born. We can call this ‘memory palace technique’ in literature. People memorize
information by addressing their visual memory as an ancient Greek memorization
technique. It is said to have its origin at about 500 B.C. At that time, there were not as many
possibilities to write down stories and scientific knowledge as today. Memory palace
technique has some rules. These can be summarized as; solitary space - not crowded,
distance of about 10 meters between loci, unique sign every fifth locus. (for unusual or less
important things are remembered better because they are different from one seen in
everyday life), no repetitive environments, loci in a not too spacious or too narrow place, loci
not lighted too dark or too bright. When we look at these two examples, their common
ground could give an idea for how the space of memory is. But there are some different
points for these examples, as well. For that reason, we will try to analyse their common and
different points to answer our basic question “How does memory reach a visual language/
space?”
IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION
Samples, which are examined, are quite differentiated from each other in some
places, when it is considered through the ideas of memory theatre and memory palace of
space of memory. Primarily, this dual status can be read from the following table (Table 1).
When looking at the common points, it can be seen the subject’s itself at their space
of memory’s centre. Because memory is related with remembrance and this relation is
personal. So ever remembrance tools or situations change also, the other common point of
each examples are that remembrance occurs with a space. Each example finds the spatial
equivalent but these space’s physical realities are different.
Table 1: The Similarities and Differences between Critchley’s Memory Theatre and
Magnussen’s Memory Palace, Courtesy of Saime Gümüştaş and Hande Asar, 2016.
The question could be what kind of space are these. For instance, when we look at
the Critchley’s Memory Theatre, this space shades into a holly concrete physical reality. As
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for the example of Magnussen, this spatial equivalent is suitable for an abstract space. But
while Magnussen is creating this abstract space (his memory palace), he may have used a
reality that is already known. Of course this again doesn’t give us a clue about that space’s
boundaries because the abstract space is unlimitedly articulated in his mind. Despite that
Critchley’s memory theatre is formed via seven numbers, its boundaries are drawn sharply.
Although being limited issue could be it three-dimensional build and could be seen by others
with a physical reality, at the same time it could be more statically space, not imaginable.
But towards the end of the book, Critchley criticizes himself. He realizes that the space of
memory needs to be more dynamic fiction. Because he didn’t die on time according to his
memory card made by Michel. After a while he figures out ‘How the memory theatre could
be’. It can be understood that from his words:
The thing, which I build in Holland, was flattened of the memory theatre idea. It was
version of the thing, which needs to be multidimensional, portable and somehow
alive, static, idle and dead. It should not be literal, should be metaphoric…Memory
is repeat. Of course, But it is repeat with a difference. It is not a recite… The memory
needs to have imagination, to be metamorphosis. I see now…Memory theatre can’t
come down to my memory… my memory theatre’s problem is being a death theatre
and will die with me. What is the meaning of this? (Critchley, 2015: 68-69).
In other respects, infinity status of Magnussen can be analysed by the others solely by
imagining because of the appearing in subject’s own mind. On the other hand, this situation
gives depth to it. And this allows it to be more dynamic and movable structure. But because
this dynamism exists through imagination, being visibility by others is emphasized
conspicuously with the metaphor of a white empty room at the scene.
The process of finding a corresponding spatial memory in Magnussen and the
situation of memory at space could be evaluated with a different viewpoint via boundaries.
These boundaries at Critchley could be read a kind of map because of the space of theatre’s
physical boundaries, fiction and being categorical, in other respects these boundaries at
Magnussen could be evaluated a kind of reticulated state because of being messier and fictive
even though it has a system in Magnussen’s mind.
Both examples give (us) important data to understand the question of what kind of a
space do they equal via their similarities and differences. These examples start to constitute
the memory like physical reality of space. For this reason, this study’s basic question of how
does memory reach a visual language could be answered via the question of what kind of
space Consequently, the space neither has a physical reality exactly nor wakes in an abstract
way completely because of memory’s dynamism. Thereby, being the situation of this
neither… nor… causes an inference toward that memory produces a Purgatory
continuously.
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64
LAW, JUSTICE, TIME:
A CRITIQUE OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE FROM WALTER BENJAMIN’S POLITICS OF

TIME
Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa
If Roger Berkowitz (2005: ix) is right when he affirms that the idea of justice has
gradually abandoned the law in western societies, the question of how to “do justice” – or,
more precisely, how to “bring justice back”– to the legal domain is perhaps one of the most
urgent and pressing in the field of legal theory today.23 I am well aware that the meaning of
justice is contested and that everybody has in mind a different notion of what justice is in
general or in particular. Nevertheless, I would like to leave aside the problem of “defining”
justice in this paper, to turn to an issue that has usually been forgotten and may be occluded
by that other bigger question. I would like to speak here about the relationship between time
and justice, and to be honest, this is not totally removed from the problem of defining
justice.24 In this regard, I would argue that any interrogation about justice entails
questioning the moment in which justice is done: in other words, one cannot speak or
theorize about justice without, in turn, discussing its temporality.
The transitional justice movement is an important part of the new developments in
the framework of human rights and has grown to a point that today is probably the main
legal approach to deal with post-conflict scenarios. This trend, however, as I will show, has
a very problematic temporality, to the extent that it represents the possibility of deferring
justice to an indefinite future, exemplifying very well Berkowitz’s diagnostic of current
western law. Following some of the insights of the philosopher Walter Benjamin about
history, time and praxis, I will criticize this perspective and I will try to theorise an
alternative relationship between time and justice for the legal domain.
Transitional Justice: A Present Without Redress
During the 80’s and 90’s of the last century, under the name of “Transitional Justice”,
there emerged a series of studies attempting to address how to “come to terms with the past”
in post-conflict or post-dictatorial settings.25 These studies were developed in the heat of the
events in Latin America after the collapse of the dictatorial regimes, in Eastern Europe after
the fall of real communism, and in South Africa after the end of Apartheid (Turner 2013:
195-196). This conception of justice then spread all over the world thanks to an important
network of scholars – the majority of them working in those post-conflict scenarios, but with
23 Berkowitz states: “The divorce of law from justice informs our modern condition. Lawfulness, in other words, has
replaced justice as a measure of ethical actions”. In concordance with him, Drucilla Cornell has added that: “Law is the
positive law and exists precisely because we no longer believe in the doing of Justice” (2014:104).
24 This is very well exemplified, of course, in the common sayings: “delayed justice is justice denied”, or “late justice
is injustice”, and so on.
25 It can be said that the opus of Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter (1986) opened this field of study, as
well as the conceptualization of their problems and solutions. For a history of the origin of the transitional justice movement
see Arthur Paige (2009).
65
Part 1 Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa Law, Justice, Time…
close ties with American universities and institutions – and through the concerted action of
NGOs and international human rights organizations. Nowadays, the transitional justice
movement is one of the most important branches in human rights discourse (ibid. 193-194)
and has become an “industry” in itself and a model to export to “underdeveloped” countries
arising from periods of conflict (Ní Aoláin 2015: 74).
Transitional justice has been defined as a “set of judicial and non-judicial measures
implemented in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses” (ICTJ 2012).
Nevertheless, the main idea underlying the transitional justice program is that countries
with a past of authoritarian rule must make a “transition to democracy”, bringing a new
regime based on a “culture of human rights” (Meister 2012:269). The understanding of the
present as a time of “transition” structures all the concepts of this literature. To make this
transition to democracy it is possible to implement different mechanisms: trials,
prosecutions, truth commissions, memorialisation, etc. However, all these are only means
to the ends of achieving democracy and a culture of human rights in the future, and
therefore, what is prime here is not the idea of “doing justice” now.
In this regard, transitional justice has a problematic temporality, to the extent that it
could imply deferring justice on behalf of other ends – democracy and the culture of
human rights – which arguably will be achieved in the future. As is very predictable however,
this future never arrives, and the transition transforms the present time in a never ending
period of interregnum in which justice is not yet available (Guardiola-Rivera 2013: 368-
369). In concrete terms, what this means is that prosecutions, trials or reparations in general
can be avoided or postponed if it is considered that these mechanisms do not help in the
process of transition or if it is assessed that these could put in danger the transitional
present. Nevertheless, this deferral has no limits, since the goals – achieving democracy and
a culture of human rights – are never fully attained.
The paradigmatic model that transitional justice has taken as a “successful” case of
study is the transitional process of South Africa. Overall, this process was characterized by
not carrying out any prosecutions, trials or forms of material reparation, and by the attempt
to create a culture of human rights through a Truth Commission where the perpetrators
could confess their crimes and provide information in exchange for a pardon or amnesty for
their actions. This model, however, after being highly celebrated by many western legal
scholars, has been heavily criticized in recent years, either for having secured the most
scandalous impunity in return for lean confessions, or for failing in removing the legacy of
Apartheid in both the cultural and economic arenas (Neocosmos 2011: 359-399; Mamdani
1999: 33-41).
As was sharply pointed out by Robert Meister, for transitional justice, “the time of
rectifying the past is never now” (2012:255). The only alternatives in this context are to
mourn for the past or to wait for a better future. But, even then, the fear of the destabilizing
effects of mourning and memory creates a paradoxical attitude of transitional justice
towards the past. To the extent that this latter is seen as a danger, this trend promotes
memory but encloses it and distances it from the present and the project of the future.
“Never again”, the name of the report of the Argentine Truth Commission – the first of its
kind in the world26–, symbolizes this ambivalent attitude of recovering the past to close it in
26 For the history of creation and a review of the work of Argentina’s “National Commission on the Disappearance
of Persons” (CONADEP) see Emilio Crenzel (2008) and Priscilla Hayner (2001). It is important to say, nevertheless, that
Argentina carried out prosecutions and conducted trials for the crimes committed during the dictatorship –even today,
66
the very act of retrieval.27 Moreover, this explains the odd obsession of transitional justice
to refer to atrocities as “crimes of the past”, even when these events may have happened
recently in some cases. The description of these crimes as belonging to the “past” in a
chronological way provokes the idea and the feeling that they are “past” in the substantial
sense of “surpassed” (Bevernage 2010: 124).
In line with this, some authors have even argued that transitional justice cannot be
seen as a mechanism to counter “collective forgetting”, as it has been traditionally presented
by its defenders.28 On the contrary, it can be argued that its techniques are implemented,
not in the face of a lack of memory, but by an “overabundance” of it in certain social contexts
marked by violence (Gordon 2008: 76). In general, societies emerging from a past of conflict
and violence do not show a tendency to forget, but rather, an “excess of memory” that
continually destabilizes the present with demands for justice. Thus, the techniques used by
transitional justice would be directed to combat that memory; to exorcise the past through
a remembrance that encourages the pacification of memories and to leave behind what
happened.29 Verne Harris has suggested, in this regard, that these politics generate “a nod
at remembering in the interests of a profounder forgetting” (2002, quoted by Bervenage
2010: 119); while Jacques Derrida has wondered, ironically, if this is not actually an “exercise
in forgetting” (2002: 54), and Costas Douzinas has similarly identified this as a very
paradoxical phenomenon in which even “the act of forgetting is forgotten” (2012: 286; see
also 2006: 23).
Put simply, this means that the politics of transitional justice works as a
temporalizing device that forecloses the past in favour of a better future, but distances
this future in an indefinite deferral.30 So, we can live now, without past and without future,
in an absolute transitional present without justice. Or, in other words, we can live imagining
the justice to come in a present in which justice is not possible. I would argue – even when I
cannot develop this idea in detail here – that the current human rights discourse suffers a
similar disease, probably infected by this temporalizing device. Somehow, human rights are
now caught between the past and the future, that is to say, between enclosed memory and
deferred utopia. In either case, the present is never a relevant time for justice. To put it in a
different way, a memory that doesn't affect the present time is only “nostalgia”, and a utopia
that never arrives is mere “fantasy”.
more than forty years after, is still judging these crimes–, and don’t fall purely into the model of deferral characteristic of
transitional justice. Actually, as I argue in another work (“Inheritances of Nuremberg: A Critical Appropriation”, not
published yet), Argentina’s post-dictatorial justice, especially during the last ten years, could be thought as a very valuable
alternative to the transitional model.
27 This is not, nevertheless, an exclusive feature of Argentina’s Truth Commission. All transitional justice truth
commissions have this same imprint of encouraging the memory to close the past. Thus, the South African Truth
Commission, for example, in the prologue of its final report stated that “the door on the past should be shut, so that it
would not imprison the glorious future”. A similar attitude can also be seen in the Sierra Leone Truth Commission, whose
members continually insisted in that the process of recovering the past was in the service of “moving the country forward”
and in the name of a “new beginning”. See Berber Bevernage (2010: 119).
28 The characterization of transitional justice as a mechanism to confront social forgetting can be seen in the already
classic work of Martha Minow (1998), but it is one of the most common characterizations that this trend has received.
29 Bervenage argues that transitional justice tries to quiet down what he calls a “memory of offense”: that is, a
memory of extreme experiences, of injuries suffered or inflicted, that haunts the present from the past (2010: 115-116).
30 This term is partially borrowed from Mendieta (2001: 180), who speaks of “technologies of temporalizing”.
67
Walter Benjamin: Now is the only Time
I will argue that a different kind of relationship could be established between time
and justice if we take into account some of Walter Benjamin’s ideas. It should not be
forgotten that orthodox Marxist thought was the first of its kind to raise the idea of the
present time as a moment of “transition”, in this case to the “classless society” or to
“communism” (Laclau and Mouffe 2010: 31-75 and 111). Thus, the idea of transition is not
new, and I would argue that Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1968)
constitutes one of the first and sharpest critiques of this understanding of history and the
temporality that it unfolds. Accordingly, Benjamin’s ideas could be extremely helpful to
understand the principal problems of transitional justice’s temporality and to develop an
alternative relationship between law, justice and time.
As is known, in the “Theses”, Benjamin makes a very severe diagnostic of Marxist
teleology that basically explains the unfolding of historical time as a progression from
primitive societies to capitalism, an unfolding that will eventually lead, necessarily, to the
classless society. On a different level, as Matthias Fritsch (2005: 21-53) has cleverly pointed
out, this critique also implies to put in question the relationship that Marxism establishes
between memory and utopia, or between past injustices and the promise of future justice. In
few words, it can be said that for Benjamin, what is not acceptable of the “transitional”
paradigm are the political consequences of this understanding of history. He points out the
“paralyzing” effects and the inclination to the “deferral” that this narrative produces in the
present. First, if history unfolds from an unjust past to a utopian scenario, human action
becomes meaningless, and dissolves in an attitude of “waiting” for the arrival of justice in
the future. Second, to this “waiting” effect, it is added the indefinite “postponement” of the
promise of redemption. In other words, to the extent that in this narrative the utopia
represents the end of history, it can only arise in the future, as the representation of what is
not yet (Benjamin 1968: 253-264; see also Moses 1997:14 and 65). And this is a logical,
unavoidable consequence of this paradigm.
Benjamin rejects this view of history and its axioms: the idea of progress and the idea
of linear continuity (Benjamin 1968: 260-264). For him this historical perspective ensures
immobility and authorizes the status quo. In this regard, Benjamin mentions that this
temporal narrative is in “empathy with the victors” and therefore “benefits the rulers” (Ibid.,
256). In contrast, he believes that historical materialism must “blast out the continuum”
(Ibid., 261-262) of time so that the “tradition of the oppressed” might be revealed (Ibid.,
257). Thus, for Benjamin, rather than the promise of a future victory, it is the memory of
past victimization what is essential to have an emancipatory project. In his words:
“[…] to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations,
[cuts] the sinews of its greatest strength. This training made the working class forget
both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of
enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren” (Ibid., 260).
Accordingly, for Benjamin, the past and not the future is that which “claims its rights”
over the present (Ibid., 253-260). And it is the past, not the future which will help us to ignite
the “spark of hope”. (Ibid., 255). In his famous metaphor, the “Angel of History” is pushed
towards a future, to which he gives his back. The Angel does not look forward towards the
68
promise of redemption, but to a past of oppression and injustices (Ibid., 257-258). The
relationship that Benjamin envisions thus is no longer between a past and a future – like in
orthodox Marxism or in transitional justice – but between a past and a present that should
settle their accounts for the future. In this conceptualization then, the present time recovers
all its importance; so, to the image of a history conceived as a permanent walking towards
the ultimate realization of humanity – as telos or transition in other words – Benjamin poses
a view of history which at its core highlights the idea of the “actualization” of historical time,
namely, the idea of “time-now” (Jetztzeit) (Ibid., 261 and 263).
This represents a return to a directly – i.e. not mediated – experience of time. From
the moment one stops seeing the present time as a simple transition between the preceding
moment and the moment that follows, historical time can no longer be thought as a
continuity, or under the orders of an immanent causality governing its course. The idea of
progress thus loses all its grip. The “instantiation” of time, moreover, has to admit the lack
of necessity in the becoming. The relationship between an instant and the instant that
follows, without a course of causality that governs history, ceases to be unique and the future
is no longer necessary; opening up different possibilities for the present (Ibid., 255). What
characterizes Benjamin’s view of history, then, is precisely this move from a “time of
necessity” to a “time of possibility” (Moses 1997: 23).
One might think that the denial of the idea of progress leads to a pessimistic view of
history, precisely because nothing would necessarily guarantee that history tends toward a
better future. However, for Benjamin, the end of the belief in the meaning of history does
not imply, as Stephen Moses (Ibid.) pointed out, the abolition of the “idea of hope”. On the
contrary, only at the ruins of historical teleology does hope acquire its full rationale
(Benjamin, 1968: 255). Utopia, which can no longer be considered as the end of history,
resurfaces with the possibility of its advent at every instant. In Benjamin’s words, hope
becomes the “weak messianic power” that has the possibility to bring the future to the feet
of this present time (Ibid., 253-254).
Conclusion
Benjamin’s project, then, can be read as a critique of the politics of time 31 set out
in the most traditional branches of Marxist thought, and represents an attempt to rethink
the place of temporality in an emancipatory project.32 As I mentioned above, his insights can
be extended today to analyse the main characteristics of transitional justice and offer an
alternative relationship between justice and time. In other words, Benjamin presents a
different kind of politics of time where memory is really unfolded to act in the present – and
not enclosed to avoid its destabilizing effects– and where to look at the future is forbidden
in order to avoid the dangers of deferral.
It is important to notice that at the core of Benjamin’s politics of time, we can find
that the distinctions between “past/present/future” – built up by progressive, transitional,
31 I take this term from Osborne (1994: 3-9), who discusses different aspects of the work of Walter Benjamin. This
concept implies that time is not simply a natural neutral phenomenon, but a political construct. For Osborne, there are
different politics of time that produce different temporalizations, which are based in alternative articulations of the past,
present and future. Moreover, for him all these politics involve specific orientations towards practice, since they provide
alternative temporal structures for action.
32 As Giorgio Agamben pointed out, Benjamin exposed that Marxist traditional eschatology reproduced a temporal
narrative that was not congruent with a revolutionary politics that aimed to change “our times” (2007:131-132).
69
teleological accounts – are actually unsustainable. For Benjamin, the injustices of the past
are the injustices of the present, and the remembrance of the past is what can bring the
justice from the future to this time. So, the temporal intersections and the merging of
temporalities is constant in Benjamin; “blasting out”, as he says, time linearity, which is
transitional justice’s temporal logic. Against orthodox Marxism and against transitional
justice, which direct their gazes to a bright future leaving us in a void and unjust present,
Benjamin seeks to give meaning to the present, actualizing it as the time of and for justice;
in opposition to them, he would say that the “time-now”, the time of the present time, is the
only relevant time for justice and the only moment in which justice can be done.
Now, what kind of justice is this? What kind of redress can be found in this present
time? As James Martel (2011: 170) has pointed out, this is human justice, with all its
imperfections and flaws – and I would add here, with all its injustices. The image of a perfect
justice only serves to its postponement; to claim the impossibility of justice now and
to defer it to the future – what is at the core of transitional justice arguments– only nullifies
the chances of justice in this world. In this regard, only by accepting the reality of an
imperfect justice is it possible to open up the doors of the present to a “messianic” moment,
after which, maybe, and only maybe, another kind of justice can be done. For Benjamin, to
do justice in the present – even if this is imperfect, incomplete, flawed since its very
inception – rather than to indefinitely wait for the dream of a perfect justice in a bright
future, is the only means that we have to reach some kind of redemption during this time. 33
Benjamin offers an alternative to think the relationship between past injustices and
the promise of justice, an alternative in which the present time is not transition to a better
future, but the instant, actually the only instant, in which justice can be achieved. Then, to
the core question of transitional justice – but also of law in general – which wonders: When
is the time for rectifying the past? When is the time of and for justice? Benjamin would say:
now, only now, because today is past but tomorrow could be here in any instant.
References
1. Agamben G., 2007, Infancia e historia, trans. Mattoni S., Buenos Aires: Adriana
Hidalgo.
2. Arthur P., 2009, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History
of Transitional Justice”, Human Rights Quarterly 31: 321-367.
3. Benjamin W., 1968, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Illuminations, trans.
Zohn H., New York: Schocken Books.
4. Berkowitz R., 2005, The Gift of Silence, New York: Fordham University Press.
5. Crenzel E., 2008, “Argentina’s National Commission on the Disappearance of
Persons: Contribution to Transitional Justice”, The International Journal of
Transitional Justice 2: 173-191.
33 Martel discusses the appropriation that Derrida makes of Benjamin’s “messianism”, and shows how through the
idea of the future “to come”, he shifts the emphasis that Benjamin placed on the “time-now”. In Martel’s words: “But
Benjamin offers us something more; by turning away, by ceasing to wait for justice altogether – as Derrida does not quite
bring himself to do […] we can perhaps find justice in the world after all. This may not be the justice we expect, but it is the
justice we can have” (2011: 170).
70
6. Cornell D., 2014, Law and Revolution in South Africa, New York: Fordham
University Press.
7. Derrida J., 2002, “Archive Fever in South Africa”, Refiguring the Archive, et. al.
Hamilton, C., Cape Town: David Philip Publishers.
8. Douzinas C., 2006, “Theses on Law, History and Time”, Melbourne Journal of
International Law 7/1, 13-27.
9. Douzinas C., 2012, “History Trials: Can Law Decide History”, The Annual Review of
Law and Social Science 8, 273-289.
10. Fritsch M., 2005, The Promise of Memory. History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin
and Derrida, New York: State University of New York Press.
11. Gordon A., 2008, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination,
Minneapolis: New University of Minnesota Press.
12. Guardiola-Rivera, O., 2013, Story of a Death Foretold, London, Bloomsbury.
13. ICTJ, 2012, “What is Transitional Justice”, available at
http://ictj.org/about/transitional-justice [date of acces: 01/05/2016].
14. Laclau E. and Mouffe C., 2010, Hegemonía y estrategia socialista, Buenos Aires:
FCE.
15. Mamdani M., 1999, “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and justice”, Truth
and Reconciliation in South Africa and the Netherlands, et. al. Dorsman R., Utrecht:
SIM, 33-41.
16. Martel J., 2011, “Waiting for Justice: Benjamin and Derrida on Sovereignty and
Immanence”, Republics of Letters: A Journey for the Study of Knowledge, Politics,
and the Arts 2, 158-172.
17. Meister, R., 2012, After Evil. A Politics of Human Rights, New York: Colombia
University Press.
18. Mendieta E., 2001, “Chronotopology: Critique of Spatiotemporal Regimes”, New
Critical Theory. Essays on Liberation, eds. Wilkerson W. and Paris J., Maryland:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 175-197.
19. Minow M., 1998, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Boston: Becaon Press.
20. Mosès S., 1997, El Ángel de la historia. Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem, trans.
Martorell A., Madrid: Cátedra.
21. Neocosmos, M., 2011, “Transition, Human Rights and Violence: Rethinking a Liberal
Political Relationship in the African Neo-colony”, Interface 3/2, 359-399.
22. Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala, 2015, “Southern voices in transitional justice: a critical
reflection on human rights and transition”, Law's Ethical, Global and Theoretical
Contexts. Essays in Honor of William Twining, eds. Baxi, U., McCrudden, C.,
Paliwala, A., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 73-89.  
23. O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter P. (eds.), 1986, Transitions from authoritarian rule,
London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
24. Osborne P., 1994, “The Politics of Time”, Radical Philosophy 68, 3-9.
25. Turner C., 2013, “Deconstructing Transitional Justice”, Law Critique 24: 193-209.
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PART 2
A JOURNEY IN LITERATURE: EXPLORING MEMORY, SPACE AND TIME
72
GEOGRAPHIES OF TRANSITION IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIAN LITERATURE:
BORDERS, HETEROTOPIAS, DYSTOPIAS
Marius Conkan
Writing on post-communist Romania is a difficult task as contrasts, vulnerabilities,

political, economic and even moral instability are dominant features of a society
reverberating the effects and pressure of totalitarianism. Even more arduous would be the
endeavour to discuss the literature of this period, escaping and dogging an inflexible
ideology, and placing oneself beyond socio-political tensions (to “alienate” from this
pressure, one way or another, on a theoretical level as practiced in formalist terms) and not
be captive in a cultural system that has to be perceived through its multilayered nature.
Methods of analysing literature gain importance, as they become useful tools in defining
specific areas of creative subjectivity and in deciphering the function of such subjective
spaces inside of aesthetic paradigms. These are the necessary steps that permit the
reconstruction/reconstitution, from traces and fragments, of a cultural landscape reflecting
human condition in post-communist Romania. In other words, I will attempt to draw a
literary cartography of this space.
Prior to describing the methods and their theoretical value in dealing with such a
complex and intricate topic (literature written after the fall of totalitarian regimes), I will
take a small detour and narrate a parable that has, as a starting point, terms applied to
fantasy. Fantasy usually (although not being a fixed rule) showcases a binary system
consisting of primary and secondary worlds, the latter being, in many cases, entered through
portals. These entry gates can be either magical objects, or spatial and temporal borders.
Despite being, in most cases, marvellous and fairy-like secondary worlds, they uphold
dystopian forces and images as metaphors for the existent or potential evil found in the
primary, real world the characters (and readers alike) temporary escape from. In his famous
essay On Fairy-Stories, J. R. R. Tolkien engages with the nature of secondary worlds and
identifies three essential traits of fantasy: recovery, escape and consolation. This triad,
applied mainly to the distribution of imaginary worlds, becomes productive in exploring the
relation between communism and post-communism, but with a completely different
axiological charge. Hence, the communist world becomes the primary world, scarred by an
acute ontological crisis, extreme violence, alienation and annihilation of individuals in an
oppressive regime. These phenomena have been thoroughly looked into by numerous
scholars, but I would like to mention Ruxandra Cesereanu’s studies and her attempts to
clarify the structure of the Romanian Gulag.
73
Part 2 Marius Conkan Geographies of Transition…
The Revolution of December 1989 can be seen as a temporal frontier, a symbolic portal of
transformation or the Ground Zero of democracy in Romania. Unfortunately, some socio-
political events of the 1990ies, like the 13-15 June 1990 Mineriad34, proved the questionable
and fragile quality of democracy in Romania, as there was no lustration law preventing
former dignitaries and former Communist Party members from assuming political and
administrative leadership. Following the same lines of argumentation, the post-communist
world becomes the secondary world, built on the ruins of the primary, dystopian world. The
dynamics of the secondary world is fuelled by the link between recovery, escape and
consolation, but not in the manner Tolkien applied it to fantasy. From a socio-political point
of view, we are dealing with a recovery of lost “truths” and an escape from the symbolic
prison into consolation, or eucatastrophe/happy disaster. The essential word, in this case,
remains eucatastrophe, as it stands for the dialectics between death and resurrection. Both
the Revolution in 1989 and the traumatic events of the 1990ies have taken their death toll in
the name of a utopian democracy, which even proved to display, through its large political
movements, the traits of a new dystopia. Moreover, the liberty of thought and expression
was, this time, barb-wired by the ruins of communism. The latter was (and to some extent
still is) a source of nostalgia for a society in transition incapable of producing and assuming,
with few exceptions, a different arrangement of its cultural space. The post-communist
array, signalizing the diverse socio-political tensions, is being charted in numerous
secondary worlds, id est woven in literary narratives of memory and identity. The crossing
from communism to post-communism is not only historical and temporal, but an essential
spatial one, because it asserts and offers individuals different manners of being-in-the-world
and can trigger the buildup of a new socio-cultural geography. Literature encompasses, first
and foremost, the map of this geography that assembles cognitive and affective spaces of
contemporary Romania. That is why one must deal with the representations of secondary
worlds in recent Romanian literature as mirror-versions (and sometimes subversive ones)
of the real, post-communist world.
Literary Spaces and Their Mapmakers
My introduction into two distinct cultural geographies with different orders and
axiological content (the post-communist one emerging upon the ruins of the other), points
to how a theory on post-communist Romanian literature is linked to spatiality. Robert T.
Tally Jr. discusses how thinking on space, starting with the Renaissance to current times,
influenced the construction of identity and cultural/philosophical paradigms, stating that:
The spatial turn in modern and postmodern literary theory and criticism is an
acknowledgement of the degree to which matters of space, place, and mapping had
been under-represented in the critical literature of the past. […] The spatial turn is
thus a turn towards the world itself, towards an understanding of our lives as
34In the summer of 1990, after the first democratic elections in Romania, power came into the hands of Ion Iliescu (FSN
– National Salvation Front). The leaders of this new political formation were former members of the Romanian Communist
Party. Protesters took the streets of Bucharest and demanded that all former members of the Communist Party should be
prevented to run for office. The peaceful and long protest turned violent, when the government decided to clear the
remaining people occupying the main square in Bucharest. Iliescu called on Romania’s population to save the new
“democratic regime” from such hooligans. Some 10.000 miners came to Bucharest and cleared the University Square in
Bucharest using violence and resulting in several killings and injuries. The trial for the committed crimes is ongoing.
74
situated in a mobile array of social and spatial relations that, in one way or another,
need to be mapped. (2013: 16-17)
Such efforts in dealing with literature through the lens of spatial and temporal
constructions are not new. The famous chronotope/time-space, coined by Bakhtin (2008:
84), still is a key instrument in grasping literary poetics and genres and many researchers
engage with his approach to literature. Moreover, space and place have become “totemic
concepts” (Hubbard and Kitchin 2011: 2) in dealing with social and cultural imaginaries. The
vast field of literary studies makes use of numerous methodologies, like geocriticism, literary
geography and cartography, in order to trace the nature of real and imagined spaces and the
role they play in our becoming (on an affective and identity level). From this point of view,
the writer is perceived as a “mapmaker” and aesthetic activities, like storytelling, involve
“mapping, but a map also tells a story, and the interrelations between space and writing tend
to generate new places and new narratives” (Tally Jr. 2013: 46).
This would be the general setting for a discourse on post-communist Romanian
literature and how spatiality can be used as a starting point. Aesthetic practices, like the
literature of memory (on the Gulag and imprisonment) highly read and published in the
1990s, or novels recreating fragments of the communist time and reveal (even if in fiction)
the traumatic history, or the narrations on the anxiety of daily life and the poetry of anguish
that emerges in 2000, expose a multitude of maps and ties between spaces and socio-
cultural phenomena. All these manifestations of thinking project a highly complex image of
the individual in the post-communist world. These maps will not be realist representations,
like the map of a city, but will reveal themselves as the product of all types of creative
language (and not limited to narrative fiction), as Tally Jr. points out:
Literary cartography, as I am using this term, need not be limited to narrative

works. It is certainly true that iconographic poetry or non-narrative description
could appear to be all the more map-like, insofar as they already appear to be
straightforward representations of space, whether in the forms of various spatial
arrangements of lines on a page or of depictions of the geographical space exterior
to literature. (2013: 49)
Thus, literary cartography can be applied to poetry, an attempt I will describe in the
analytical part of my study. How can cartography operate in Romanian literature written
after 1989, as this transition from communism to post-communist is based on hybridization
on the level of memory, affects and cultural identity? The task is even more challenging as
post-communist space is par excellence a hybrid one. This is mainly due to the fact that it
contains traces of socio-political dystopia that persist and resist in the dynamics of social
deconstruction and reconstruction. Central and East-European literatures are seen today as
literature of the ruins (following Heinrich Böll’s definition of Trümmerliteratur), from the
point of view that “[a]s the exemplary dialectical and polysemic figure, ruins in the
postcommunist context offer a critique of both the (communist-socialist) past and
(democratic-capitalist) present” (Williams 2013: 14).
75
From Blended Spaces to Heterotopias
There are four concepts and processes useful in describing the geography (meaning
both real and fictional spaces) of Romanian post-communist literature: conceptual
blending/blended space, heterotopia, postmemory and affective mapping. Gilles Fauconnier
and Mark Turner see at the basis of human thinking the process of conceptual blending. This
term displays the way in which diverse structures, relations and images are forged in the
subconscious, enabling the creation of new spaces and objects. Although Fauconnier and
Turner bring numerous and complex arguments in support of their definition, one general
observation becomes relevant for the discussion at hand:
we argue that conceptual blending underlies and makes possible all these
diverse human accomplishments, that it is responsible for the origin of language,
art, religion, science, and other human singular feats, and that it is as indispensable
for basis everyday thought as it is for artistic and scientific abilities. (2002: vi)
Conceptual blending is at the core of creative and critical thinking. In other words,
literary structures/spaces and their constant emergence are produced by conceptual
blending. This is also the case for the production of blended spaces, where real/physical and
virtual/fictional spaces are interwoven to such an extent that, through defamiliarization,
they recreate the experience of a completely new ontological context and setting.
How can a theory on human thinking be useful for the analysis of post-communist
Romanian Literature? Post-communist space is a hybrid one, keeping traces and defining
elements of a dystopian past. We are certainly dealing with geographies of memory and
affects still scarred by a generic and historical trauma. There are some voices today talking
about the affective/emotional turn in geography and about how “[m]emory is also always
bound up with place, space, the body, practice and materiality. It is of geography and
geography of it.” (Jones and Garde-Hansen 2012: 10). If aesthetic practices generate new
spaces/maps of understanding the world and “collectives of memory are woven out of the
myriad narratives of individual histories which are lived from within” (ibid. 2), then
literature in post-communist times can be seen as a constellation of spaces and narratives
that display a mirror-image of current Romania. Such an image can turn into a relevant
geography of affects in post-communism and conceptual blending and blended spaces help
in mapping this period in Romanian literature. On the level of creative activities, the generic
post-communist space (real and socio-political) enters the process of hybridization with the
mental/subjective space. The latter interacts with the spaces of memory and trauma. All
these elements merge into a blended space, real and at the same time imagined, a
“thirdspace” quoting Edward W. Soja’s concept. This will turn the post-communist world
into a cultural network of real, imagined and fictional/aestethic spaces fuelled by the
dialectics of anguish and recovery.
All these blended spaces are conjoined into a heterotopia, to sum up the phenomena
and use a term defined by Michel Foucault in his essay Different Spaces (1988: 175-185). His
approach on space continues to be the source for numerous and relevant debates on space.
Brian McHale, following Foucault, defines heterotopia as “the sort of space where fragments
of a number of possible orders have been gathered together” (2004: 18) and a “kind of space
[that] is capable of accommodating so many incommensurable and mutually exclusive
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worlds” (ibid. 44). These arguments enlighten the meaning of a post-communist

heterotopia, in the logic of conceptual blending on the aesthetic level. In short, such a
particular heterotopia is a real and imagined space, merging both communist (traumatic,
fictional) space and the multitude of personal/creative spaces of post-communism. Literary
heterotopia, as a system of blended spaces, comprises numerous subjective geographies as
expressions of postmemory.
Geographies of Postmemory and Affective Mapping
Postmemory reaches the core of my argumentation. This concept becomes the

driving and affective force that criss-crosses this aesthetic heterotopia, insofar as it is
perceived as the other space mirroring the real post-communist space. Postmemory, as a
valuable theoretical acquisition for cultural studies, is defined by Marianne Hirsch as
describing:
the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective
trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they
“remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they
grew up. […] Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus not actually mediated by
recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. (2008: 106-107)
Therefore, as Hirsch points out, postmemory is inextricably linked to aesthetic

practices. That is why Romanian authors of a younger generation process and rebuild such
images and narratives on the horizon of blended spaces, following the paths of postmemory.
A useful example would be the poets belonging to the 2000 Generation, who have written
about the anxieties of a society in transition, unaware that they also managed to become
critical of a dystopian, communist Romania they spent their childhood in. This Romania and
its meanings are relived, by these poets, through collective and individual narratives of past
generations. Despite the fact that debutant authors (after 2010) seem to have freed
themselves from the communist ghost, still very much haunting Romanian politics, the
literature of the last three decades has become either a symptom of trauma (as it is the case
of writers directly targeted by the totalitarian regime), or the aftermath of postmemory for
those authors exploring the ruins and distress of a society in transition. Through
postmemory, functioning as a matrix of their works, numerous writers capture the affective
maps of Romania.
We interact with the world and space in two significant ways: through cognitive maps,
as understood by Fredric Jameson, and through affective maps. The latter is described by
Jonathan Flatley as a method for literary analysis, but applied in the general context of
geography “the term affective mapping has been used to indicate the affective aspects of the
maps that guide us, in conjunction with our cognitive maps, through our spatial
environment” (2008: 77). Affective mapping describes, according to Flatley, the way in
which the reader reacts and connects to spaces that emerge in literary works, with the
purpose of attaining a different understanding of the world he or she lives in. Moreover, the
reader seeks to acquire different skills of relating to the world he or she inhabits and act,
including emotionally, inside of it:
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In essence, the reader has an affective experience within the space of the text, one
that repeats or recalls earlier, other experiences, and then is estranged from that
experience, and by way of that estrangement told or taught something about it. This
is the moment of affective mapping. (ibid. 7)
I focused, up until this point, on the processes through which real and imaginary
geographies are recreated in post-communist literature. The term affective mapping is
useful for the discussion at hand, as it clarifies the relationship both readers and writers have
with these geographies. There are two crucial elements, through which affective mapping
operates: first, through the readers’ self-estrangement and secondly, through the rhizomatic
structure these maps seem to display. This refers to the manner in which such maps are in a
permanent state of reconstruction, as they are being constantly reconnected, revised and
reassembled. Both conceptual blending and the production of blended spaces, but also
postmemory imply, on the aesthetic level, a sort of defamiliarization and estrangement from
certain ontological situations, enabling their perception in a completely new manner. The
reader’s self-estrangement, added to all these elements, is a key moment in the emergence
of affective maps. These maps will ultimately transform/reorient the individual’s perception
and identity. Authors create certain affective maps where readers rewrite, like in a
palimpsest, their own maps. In this cycle new existential geographies will appear.
Affective mapping, while discussing literature in post-communist Romania, stands
for a synthesis of blended and post-memorial spaces, elements that form an aesthetic
heterotopia. Affective maps like these are made out of cultural settings reflecting a world in
transition, but still very much connected to a major trauma. Contemporary Romanian
writers constantly recreate these affective maps that have a rhizomatic structure and are
grasped by readers through self-estrangement. Therefore, using conceptual blending along
with heterotopia and post-memory (as constitutive resources) will gradually lead to the
revealing of an extensive affective map, with all of its nuances and labyrinths, and define
post-communist Romania. In short, while some writers create a set of maps, others will
constantly rewrite them. Inside the affective world of the reader, as these maps will be
reassembled, an ontological upheaval will occur. My analysis uses two distinct study-cases
as examples for how such an existential geography emerges. The first example is Mariana
Marin, who by living both in communism and post-communism, manages to convert both
worlds in a heterotopic manner in her poetry. She will draw one of the most poignant
affective maps in Romanian literature of the last decades. The second example is a more
recent one and deals with the poets of the 2000 Generation. Their works are products of
postmemory and display a complete rewriting and erasure of past affective maps.
Mapping Post-Communist Romanian Poetry
After a decade since the fall of communism in Romania, we witness how a new poetic
paradigm surfaces, illustrating the changes in culture and mentality for a society still in
transition and scarred by the ruins of totalitarianism. After The Fracturist Manifesto,
written in 1998 by Marius Ianuș and Dumitru Crudu, Romanian poetry stands out due to its
radical changes in style, setting out to capture identity and social tensions in post-
communist Romania. It is Mariana Marin and Angela Marinescu, poets of a previous
generation, who have actually opened the path for new aesthetic models, through their
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incision-like poetics, frankness and visceral poetry. As forerunners, we must analyse their
contribution to the construction of an affective map in post-communism.
Mariana Marin (1956–2003) was a poet during the communist period and also
published outstanding volumes after 1989. Her works showcase how blended spaces emerge
and combine existential frames with different axiological charges. In other words, her poetry
exemplifies a literary heterotopia, as it deals with two worlds (the communist and post-
communist) interfering with each other and merging into a hybrid space, very much
imprinted by both the trauma of the past and the anguish of the present. This would be, in
general, the affective map the author delivers as a testimony of an unfortunate history. Going
through Marin’s anthology The Dowry of Gold, published in 2002 (the title ironically sums
up Romania’s historical past and present misfortune), one can’t overlook how consequent
she was throughout her grandiose poetic project. This project is, first and foremost, about a
life capturing anxiety and the paroxysm of suffering with all its faces and forms. Mariana
Marin’s style does not substantially change throughout her career and the obsessive states
and ideas accelerate, from one book to another. Her debut, A Hundred Year War, 1981,
contains a poetry placed on the border between metaphor and cutting-edge simplicity, but
gradually her poems gain the rhythm and clarity of verdicts, self-diagnosis and will
eventually open up to the social dimension still very much stigmatized by communism. The
political was for Marin a mere pretext or a threshold in negotiating her own anguish of
tremendous proportions. Her poetry, written during communism, deals with the existential
and socio-political decline, but will apply allusive and suppressed stylistic features, due to
official censorship. After 1990, her tone shifts toward being vehement and straightforward,
while her clear syntax leads to undoubtable manifest-like messages.
Mariana Marin’s universe is a vicious circle, returning to the roots of evil, as shown
in her volume Work Shops (1991) where an acute elegiac atmosphere prevails. The equation
of existence could as well be based on the following: fiction-dream-utopia-truth, ontological
dimensions depicting the author’s personal myth. A more accurate description would
actually point to an anti-myth, as it describes a complete dissolution, from which no
soteriological elements can be recovered. What are Mariana Marin’s fictions she constantly
evokes in her poems, as they feature dreams, utopia and truth, all entangled in an unsolvable
equation typical of her existence?
Fiction is for Mariana Marin reality in its translucid cruelty. The author attempted to
define and understand this idea using, at times, tenderness and sometimes revolt (the
oxymoron is at the core of this poetry of limits, as numerous verses showcase an interplay
between the solar and the thanatological). Moreover, while internalising these
contradictions in an abyssal manner, the poet was confronted with a mirror reflecting her
identity, in which, like an anti-Narcissus, she will find her ultimate decay. Marin’s fictions
are her fantasies, anxieties and loneliness (in poetry or in life). She constantly explored these
states and found every single time, through a crystal-cutting technique and language, a
proper and favourite expression for them. Fiction is also personal and social utopia,
translated into a funeral idealism that nurtured the departing from this world. This will
reveal the relationship between the self and reality, which shows religious traits, now infused
by dystopian elements. For Marin, who places dignity above all virtues, one major fiction is
Anne Frank, her double and even the assumed “maternal” spectrum in the name of a
hereditary trauma. She will enlighten everything that had been silenced before. From this
point of view, it is interesting to observe how the same poems from The Secret Annex, 1986,
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are rekindled in Work Shops as notes to a self. Marin unifies in a single “fiction” and in a
singular and symbolic space two very similar traumas, caused by two ideologies rooted in
pure evil. Above all fantasies, anxieties and utopias, the ultimate and primary fiction of
Mariana Marin rests: truth and her poetry. These two instances overlap in a tragic universe,
despite the fact that writing poetry does not concise with finding the truth. The personal,
social and historical truths escape her, but this process sets the pathway for an inner and
stylistic revolution.
Giorgio Agamben, in Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive,
discusses the category of the impossible and its ontological value. For Agamben the
traumatic and funeral spaces in Auschwitz represent “the devastating experience in which
the impossible is forced into the real” (1999: 148). The philosopher’s definition of “the
existence of the impossible” (ibid.) linked to the acute presence of death leads to “the
catastrophe of the subject” (ibid.). Such a parenthesis is supported by the fact that Mariana
Marin’s poetry accurately expresses the ontology of the impossible, as it archives and
transcribes, through complex languages, realities in which the humane is completely
eradicated. This could reveal the meaning of the “fictions” found in The Dowry of Gold, as
they capture the impossibility in its existence and the poetic life on the brink between
salvation/truth and dissolution. This is the point in which Mariana Marin comes very close
to Herta Müller, as we find in her prose the description of the same weapons and effects of
dispossession in a totalitarian society, but making use of a different symbolic order and other
stylistic resources. What Herta Müller managed in prose, has brilliantly come out for
Mariana Marin in poetry.
My second case-study evolves around the poets of the 2000 Generation, who have
ultimately retraced, in a rhizomatic manner, the affective maps in contemporary Romanian
literature. These poets reacted to the social distress of those times and attempted to depict,
even using the autobiographical lens, the maladies of a ruined reality. Their attitude turned
against the cultural system and was fed by postmemory that constantly activates the
possibility of historical trauma repeating itself. They managed, on the level of poetry, to
create blended spaces consisting of the real post-communist space intertwined with the
subjective/autobiographic one, as the latter is contaminated by post-memorial settings. The
modified tone and liberalization of language, signs of a change in the aesthetic paradigm,
was given by Marius Ianuș and Dumitru Crudu in 1998, with the publication in a local
newspaper, Monitorul de Brașov, of The Fracturist Manifesto.
The paper, written by the two poets as a response to the socio-political turmoil of the
90ies, condemns “the eighties (postmodernist) poetry of the real and its derivation from
culture”, by refusing the usage of “commonality of every-day language”, “existential
tautology”, “conventionalism and conformism”, “the generalization, collectivization and
socialization of intimacy and individuals”. This manifesto, in its authentic enthusiasm, offers
an overlapping and even osmosis, on the level of senses and affects, between the fracturist
poet and reality, between poetry and ontological states/reactions/contexts. In other words,
the fracturist poet sees his or her writing in accordance to the world he or she inhabits and
going beyond cultural-affiliated generalizations and conceptualizations.
From a larger historical perspective, the manifesto announces principles already
found in the poetry of the Beat Generation or in the poetics of the Avant-garde, where these
principles have been clearly formulated and theorized and some have even taken violent
socio-political stances. The fracturist manifesto resorts, in order to end the crisis in
80
literature, to ideas belonging to an already influent cultural past (peripheral or mainstream).

Going beyond the neoavant-gardist perspective, visible in their attitude, the authors crusade
for a new mimesis in poetry.
The essential part of the entire manifesto, entitled The First Annex and written by
Dumitru Crudu, points to how fracturist poetry can be written. The most relevant aspects he
draws upon are: “deconceptualizing the object of our reactions”, “defamiliarization” of pre-
existent situations”, “erasing limits between the object causing reactions and our responses”,
“unity of senses and the mind”. Defamiliarization of states/situations, on the level of the
imaginary and discourse, becomes relevant as it originates in the famous concept introduced
by Viktor Shklovsky, ostranenie (estrangement, defamiliarization). The estrangement of
precarious ontological realities, enabling their perception in a completely different manner,
made the redrawing of post-communist Romania and its affective map possible.
Authors who made their debut in the 2000s discovered and refined, also by coming
in contact with Western poetry, a language that could finally express the new cultural
transformations. This can be observed in the stylistic variety of this period and is worth
mentioning: the subversive biography found in the works of Marius Ianuș, Dan Sociu,
Ruxandra Novac and Elena Vlădăreanu, the post-surrealistic elements in Dan Coman’s
poems or the neoexpressionist features of Claudiu Komartin’s poetry. Dan Sociu, as the most
well-known poet of the 2000 generation, sheds light on the disillusioned and funeral
surfaces of post-communist Romania, but also plays upon the vital and erotic/sexual energy,
breaking all taboos. This poetry captures the uncertainty of love and “utopia” (with all of its
meanings) in a disenchanted world, whose paralysis does not manage to devoid all moments
of organic enthusiasm, revelation and exaltation experienced in the company of the Other.
Even if my study only uncovered fragments and parts of the affective maps illustrating
the image of Romanian post-communism, it is clear that theories on space can deliver
relevant methods of portraying such a complex and complicated period. They can bring us
closer to a more meaningful understanding of reality, if we apply literary cartography on the
novels dealing with the daily struggles in post-communism or on the ones starting the
journey from the present and refocus on the treacherous totalitarian past. Space will always
tell us who we were, who we are and, probably, who we will become.
References
1. Agamben G., 1999, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. D.
Heller-Roazen, New York: Zone Books.
2. Fauconnier G., M. Turner, 2002, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the
Mind Hidden Complexities, New York: Basic Books.
3. Flatley J., 2008, Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
4. Foucault M., 1988, “Different Spaces”, Essential Works of Foucault (Vol. II):
Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, trans. Robert Hurley, ed. J. D. Faubion, New
York: The New Press, 175-185.
5. Hirsch M., 2008, “The Generation of Postmemory”, Poetics Today 29(1): 103-128.
6. Hubbard P., R. Kitchin (eds.), 2011, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage.
7. Jones O., J. Garde-Hansen (eds.), 2012, Geography and Memory: Explorations in
Identity, Place and Becoming, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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8. M. M. Bakhtin, 2008, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. C. Emerson and
M. Holquist, ed. M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press.
9. McHale B., 2004, Postmodernist Fiction, New York: Routledge.
10. Tally Jr. R. T. (ed.), 2011, Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in
Literary and Cultural Studies, New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
11. Tally Jr. R. T., 2013, Spatiality, New York: Routledge.
12. Williams D., 2013, Writing Postcommunism: Towards a Literature of the East
European Ruins, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
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RACIAL MELANCHOLIA AND POETICS OF (IM)MOBILITY IN DINAW MENGESTU’S
THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS
Hatice Bay
Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things Heaven Bears tells the melancholy story of a
sorrowful Ethiopian émigré, Sepha Stephanos, and his friends who live in Washington D. C.
for seventeen years now. In order to explore several layers of melancholia suggested in the
work, it is first necessary to turn to Freud’s formulation of melancholia. Freud defines
melancholia as a pathological form of unresolved grief. For Freud, the melancholic is a
perpetual mourner who has taken the lost person inside of himself and replaced his own ego
with the lost object. The melancholic, according to Freud, establishes “an identification…
with the abandoned object. Thus the shadow of the object [falls] upon the ego” (1916: 249).
Therefore, unlike the mourner, the melancholic cannot let go of the lost object. Freud’s
theorization on the melancholic’s obsession with the lost object and his internalization of it
is based on psychoanalysis. The analytical subject that Freud formulated does not fully
account for the lived experience of a minority individual. More recently, the concept of racial
melancholia has been revealed through the work of Cheng, Eng and Han, experts in race
studies. According to Cheng, in the US through institutional processes a dominant, standard,
white national ideal is created (2001:10) and even if the racial other identifies with and
strives to achieve this ideal whiteness, he can never fully attain it. “[T]his inability to blend
into the ‘melting pot’ of America”, as Eng and Han remark, implies that for the minority
person, “ideals of whiteness are continually estranged. They remain at an unattainable
distance, at once a compelling fantasy and a lost ideal” (2000: 671). As a result of this, the
minority person takes on a phantasmal and melancholic state.
In Mengestu’s novel, Sepha’s grief is induced first and foremost by the loss of his
country and family. Actually, he is guilt-ridden because his father is killed by the
revolutionaries due to Sepha’s communist activities back in Addis Ababa when he was
seventeen years old. Sepha cannot forgive himself and although he flees the bloody military
coup and settles in D.C., his past still haunts him. He says,
I used to let my imagination get the best of me. My hallucinations of home become
standard. I welcomed them into my day completely. I talked to my mother across
from the bus; I walked home with my father across the spare, treeless campus of my
northern Virginia community college. We talked for hours. I told him about my
classes, about Berhane and our little apartment together and my job carrying
suitcases at the Capitol Hotel. I explained to him the parts of American culture that
I had never heard of before. “There’s no respect here,” I told him. “The students in
my class call our teacher John. They dress like they’re coming from bed and then
sleep through class” (Mengestu 2007: 176).
Obviously, even after spending years in his “new” country, Sepha cannot experience the
“present” fully in the present; he is still “engaged with recycling the past” (Reed 2014),
especially his lost father. As a result, he is in a dimension where time does not flow and this
represents one of the key characteristics of melancholic subject who becomes the lost subject
83
Part 2 Hatice Bay Racial Melancholia…
himself. In Sepha’s case, Sepha becomes his father by incorporating him into himself.
Namely, while the world spins on around him, Sepha is at a standstill and this forces the
melancholic’s loss to rise to the center of his consciousness and become the preeminent force
in his life. As he says, “I still see [my father] everywhere I go” (Mengestu 2007: 10). Sepha’s
melancholy is further exacerbated not only through the loss of country, home and family but
also loss of former self and social status. Back in Addis Ababa, he used to be a have “a
prominent father and distinguished family background” (ibid. 85) but when he arrives in D.
C., his uncle Berhane finds him a job as a bellhop at the Capitol Hotel. His new status and
identity cause him to lose his sense of self that he had known; in its place, he has to create a
new perception of self. In a disillusioned way, he expresses his feelings thus: “I couldn’t
believe that my father had died and I had been spared in order to carry luggage in and out
of a room” (ibid. 142). Apparently, his passage from one country to another displaces his
sense of self. As a result, this lost identity becomes the lost object that Sepha internalizes
and consumes.
The US with its famous American Dream cannot provide a rescue for him, either. The
inseparable gap between the imagined America and the reality of physical space is another
cause for Sepha's melancholy. As Freud points out, melancholy results not only from the loss
of a specific love-object but also from the loss of faith in “liberty, an ideal, and so forth”
(1925: 164). For Sepha, this lost ideal is the promise of America as the site of good education,
prosperity and success. When he sees an ad campaign of Virginia community college which
displays “[f]our students-one white, one black, one Asian, one Hispanic-are walking across
the lawn, books in arm, smiling at one another”, Sepha perceptively comments thus:
After seventeen years here, I am certain of at least one thing: the liberal idea of
America is at its best in advertising. Sixteen years ago, I saw those same smiling
faces strolling across the neatly trimmed lawn on a roadside billboard, a pastoral
scene that at the same time was so appealing to me I was willing to buy it with no
questions asked. In the absence of a family, a home, friends, and a country, being a
student was as complete an identity as I ever hoped for. There was a power to the
word, something akin to being the citizen of a wealthy, foreign country…
[Nonetheless] The first aim of the refugee is to survive, and having done that, that
initial goal is quickly replaced by the general ambitions of life (Mengestu 2007: 98).
This passage demonstrates that America does not live up to its clichéd image as a promised
land and foregrounds the disillusionment of Sepha, who all along has lived through an
ideological phantasm.
In the beginning, Sepha lives with his uncle in an apartment complex, to be more
precisely, in an Ethiopian Diaspora. Later on, in order to create his own place in life, he
moves out of his uncle’s apartment and buys a small grocery store at Logan Circle, which is
a desolate neighbourhood in D.C. He describes Logan Circle as “predominantly poor, black,
cheap, and sunk in a depression that had struck the city twenty years earlier and never left”
(ibid. 35-36). At first, he holds on to his American Dream: “I spent two thousand dollars of
borrowed money on it with the idea that perhaps my store could become a deli, and in
becoming a deli, a restaurant, and in becoming a restaurant, a place that I could sit back and
look upon proudly” (ibid. 3). However, “[d]espite my recent efforts”, he says, “there is
nothing special to my store. It’s narrow, shabby, and brightly lit, with a ceiling of fluorescent
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bulbs that hum for over an hour every hour after being turned on” (ibid.). Soon, he becomes
disillusioned with his shop:
No one tells you this at the beginning, but the days of a shopkeeper are empty. There
are hours of silence punctuated briefly with bursts of customers who come and go
within the span of five minutes. The silence becomes a cocoon in which you can hear
only your voice echoing; the real world in which you live begins to fade into a past
that you have tried to put to rest (ibid. 40).
He further remarks thus: “Left alone behind the counter, I was hit with the sudden terrible
and frightening realization that everything I had cared for and loved was either lost or living
on without me seven thousand miles away, and that what I had here was not a life, but a
poorly constructed substitution made up of one uncle, two friends, a grim store, and a cheap
apartment” (ibid.). As these passages demonstrate, Sepha in his isolation incessantly
contemplates on his loss and although he attempts to redefine himself and adapt to his new
country he cannot move forward in his life. In fact, it is not just the loss of family, country
but also the stagnant life resulting from limited opportunities and the spatially maintained
cultural exclusion and social marginalization that leaves Sepha in melancholy.
As Sepha mentions in the above passage, he finds solace in his two friends whom he
knows from his previous job as a bellhop. Joseph from the Congo and Kenneth the Kenyan
visit Sepha every week in his store. Kenneth is an engineer and Joseph is a waiter at an
expensive downtown restaurant called the Colonial Grill. Kenneth is an aspirer who has
“achieved” his American Dream. “Kenneth is an engineer who tries not to look like one”,
Sepha says. “His shirt is neatly pressed, and his tie is firmly fastened around his neck. He
believes in the power of a well-tailored suit to command the attention and respect of those
who might not otherwise give him a second thought” (ibid. 2). In fact, what Kenneth
epitomizes is the desire of the minority person to attain an ‘ideal’ of whiteness while never
fully achieving that perfection. In this sense, Kenneth resembles the “mimic man” whom
Bhabha defines as “the effect of a flawed colonial mimesis, in which to be Anglicized is
emphatically not to be English” (2004: 125). The mimic man is “Indian in blood and colour,
but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (ibid.). I find this concept
applicable to Kenneth, who strives to reconstruct an idealized American identity but in this
mimetic process, retains his actual “blood and color”. In a conversation with Joseph he states
thus: “‘You can never forget where you came from if you have teeth as ugly as these’”
(Mengestu 2007: 2-3). Obviously, he himself is aware of his melancholic imitation. Even if
he has reached the standard of a white person, his bad teeth, for instance, stand for his
identity: he is first and foremost a third world black person. Although when the three of
them come together they form in Mengestu’s words “a little surrogate family of expatriates,
refugees, immigrants” (Reed 2014); they are still stuck in their former lives and cannot break
free. Their conversations revolve around their home, the countries that they lost and the
families that they miss. In a way, they are living in a “purgatory”, circumscribed by their
pasts and past selves.
A glimmer of hope appears in Sepha’s life when a white American woman and her bi-
racial daughter move into a house next to Sepha's store. During this time, Logan Circle
undergoes rapid gentrification and Judith is one of the affluent white people who moves into
Logan Circle. She buys one of the beautiful houses that has fallen into ruin and begins to
85
restore it to some of its previous grandeur. Through Judith, Sepha has the chance to
establish a real relationship in the present. His relationship with her is at first devoid of
tension. Yet, the more they talk and get to know each other, social and racial gaps emerge
between the two characters. The crux of tension takes place when Sepha is invited for a
dinner at Judith’s house. As Reed comments, “Before he walked into that house he could
fantasize or daydream about perhaps pursuing her romantically or even in terms of a close
friendship, but once he walks into that house and then walks back to his apartment that just
seems impossible to him” (2014). Indeed, while at Judith’s house, feelings of worthlessness
and insecurity possess Sepha. His relationship with Judith begins to complicate his self-
perception. He states: “I had forgotten who I was, with my shabby apartment and run-down
store, and like any great fool, I had tried to recast myself into the type of man who dined
casually on porcelain plates and chatted easily about Emerson and Tocqueville while sitting
on a plush leather couch in a grand house” (Mengestu 2007: 80). This passage addresses as
much to the unequal social positions between the two characters as it does to the black man’s
own racial melancholia integral in his perception of his self. As Mengestu also notes, “There
is a doubt about how other people actually see them [Sepha, Joseph and Kenneth] and all
three of them are forced to confront not only issues of quiet racism but also feelings of
insecurity, feelings of not exactly worthlessness but of being held in a lower esteem than they
would like to be, and that definitely complicates their identities not only towards each other
but really in terms of how they see themselves” (Reed 2014). Evidently, Sepha suffers from
racial melancholia “whereby his …racial identity is imaginatively reinforced through the
introjection of a lost, never-possible perfection, an inarticulable loss that comes to inform
[his] sense of his…own subjectivity” (Cheng 2001: xi).
The only affirmative relationship that Sepha establishes is with Naomi, the eleven
year old precocious daughter of Judith. Their relationship unfolds over evenings and
afternoons spent reading and sharing stories in Sepha’s store. With Naomi, Sepha comes
alive because as Mengestu expresses “she's biracial, she has an African father and an
American mother, and to some degree Sepha is able to attach himself to her partly because
a lot of the anxieties of race are diminished in someone like her” (Reed 2014). More than
that, through reading and acting out the way his father told stories when he himself was a
child, Sepha transforms his shop into an alternative space of belonging, of remembering,
and of being himself without pretense or compromise.
Towards the end of the novel, the tension between African American community of
the Logan Circle and the white authorities and residents grows. The residents of Logan Circle
protest the gentrification of their neighbourhood; nonetheless, Sepha again remains passive.
He states:
I was in no position, though, to say what was right or wrong. I was not one of “these
people,” as Mrs. Davis had just made clear to me. I hadn’t forced anyone out, but I
had never really been a part of Logan Circle either, at least not in the way Mrs. Davis
and most of my customers were. I had used it for its cheap rent, and if others were
now doing the same, then what right did I have to deny them? (Mengestu 2007:189)
Thus, Sepha expresses his unbelongingness, voicelessness and his outsideness despite the
seventeen years he spent in D.C. As the tone of this passage also reveals, his perpetual émigré
standpoint sharpens his disappointment. Mengestu too stresses this point by stating thusly:
86
Sepha occupies a very strange place in the community. He is, to some degree, a part
of it in that he's been a resident for a very long time and owns a small grocery store,
and yet at the same time he's also not a part of it. He's an African migrant, not an
African-American who's been a part of this community for generations like many of
the other residents. And so he remains slightly outside of the community and at the
same time when Judith comes in Sepha's able to play this sort of middle ground
where he is both attracted and attached to Judith and her daughter, Naomi, and at
the same time does have a loyalty to the community but where his loyalty lies is kind
of impossible to say because he's neither really here nor there in some degree (Reed
2014).
Again, Mengestu draws attention to the alien position of the immigrant and questions whose
voice in America counts and who has access to space and to belonging.
In the meantime, as a reaction towards the gentrification Judith’s car and house have
been damaged and she is forced to move out again. I argue this is the very contribution of
Mengestu’s novel to the issue of racial melancholy. His aim is not to sentimentalize the Black
American’s condition, by creating characters that are stuck in never-ending cycles of
melancholia, but to show that displacement is not peculiar to the non-dominant minority
group. Here, Judith too embodies the émigré’s condition. She also constantly strives to make
home and find a place for herself and her daughter. As she tells Sepha before Logan Circle,
she moved from Chicago to Boston to Virginia (Mengestu 2007: 54) and now again she
moves towards a new “temporary” destination. As she herself tells Sepha, “‘I still owe you a
dinner’”, “‘Maybe once I settle into a temporary place, you can come over and join Naomi
and me’” (ibid. 228). Evidently, Mengestu complicates the conventional dichotomy of the
powerless,oppressed and displaced immigrant as opposed to the powerful, subjugating,
stable white American. Mobility, exclusion and the search for home does not seem to be the
problem of the immigrant other but also of the native self as well.
In conclusion, Mengestu’s book represents the melancholy of his characters due to
their losses and inability to become the “perfect” citizens of their “new” community. They
are stuck characters; however, they do not thoroughly display signs of “profoundly painful
dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, [and]
inhibition of all activity,” as Freud states in “Mourning and Melancholia.” (1916: 244). On
the
contrary, as the characters have attested, making loss less painful is possible through
featuring intersubjective social relations, sharing life stories and performing ancestral
habits. The title The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears that is borrowed from Dante’s
Inferno also avers this conclusion. Joseph utters the lines, “Through a round aperture I saw
appear, / Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, / Where we came forth, and once
more saw the stars” (99), which appear at the very end of Inferno, where Dante is allowed
to have one glimpse into heaven after having travelled through hell. Dante thus expresses
what Mengestu’s characters experience in America. They have travelled through hell and are
still waiting for the beauty that is going to come after that. Thus, Mengestu illustrates how
the US may offer a propitious future for the displaced people. As he himself notes, the
journey is not over yet: “They’re waiting to see beauty in their lives, they're searching for
beauty within themselves, and so it's not a finished journey by any measure; it's very much
a sort of ongoing process” (Reed 2014).
87
References
1. Bhabha, H. K., 2004, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge.
2. Cheng, A. A., 2001, The Melancholy of Race, Oxford: Oxford UP.
3. Eng, L. D. and Han S., 2000, “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia”, Psychoanalytic
Dialogues, 10 (4), 667-700.
4. Freud, S., 1916, “Mourning and Melancholia”, The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14, eds. S. Freud, J. Strachey, A. Freud,
A. Strachey, and A. Tyson, 243-258.
5. Freud, S., 1925, “Mourning and Melancholia”, The international psycho-analytic
library: Collected papers Vol. 5, ed. & trans. J. Riviere, 152-170.
6. Mengestu, D., 2007, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, New York, NY:
Riverhead Books.
7. Reed, Josephine, 2014, “An Interview with Dinaw Mengestu”, The Big Read February
7, available at
8. http://www.neabigread.org/books/beautifulthings/readers-guide/credits/.
88
THE PRACTICALITIES OF ‘MAPPING’ LITERATURE: THE LIMITED/LIMITING SPACE
OF PORTUGAL IN THE NOVELS OF VALTER HUGO MÃE
Anneliese Hatton
Geocriticism is a relatively new theoretical angle but is quickly gaining momentum as moves
towards interdisciplinary perspectives are embraced and encouraged. It has developed in
response to the ‘spatial turn’ in theory; where previously the significance of history was given
attention and the field of geography was isolated, from the 1970s onwards the significance
of the study of space has attracted ever more scholars (Soja 1989, ch. 2). As with any
analytical tool, there are a variety of methods utilized, but the process of ‘mapping’ is one
that many literary scholars already use, although usually as a process rather than as an end
result, involving the visualization of the movements of characters and the variety of settings
in literary texts. It has a variety of purposes in the literary sphere, for example mapping how
a group of novels represent space (Moretti 1998), but as I am discussing its application to
individual texts I will restrict my examination to its usefulness and application in these
instances. Therefore, a method for mapping will first of all be outlined, and this will then be
applied to two novels by contemporary Portuguese author valter hugo mãe: o nosso reino
(2004) and a máquina de fazer espanhóis (2010). 35 Through a spatial analysis of these
novels it is evident that the spaces are used in a very specific way: to emphasize the
limited/limiting space of Portugal itself.
The ‘Mapping’ Process
The vast majority of literary criticism focusses on characters: their actions and the
consequences of these, their relationships with others, and what this means in the socio-
historical context. The setting of a novel has previously been perceived as merely a backdrop
to the narrative; extra details to ‘flesh out’ the atmosphere. However, recent scholarship has
come to recognize that the space (setting) of a narrative can actually condition the actions of
the characters, particularly from a Bakhtinian perspective, where ‘space becomes charged
and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ (Bakhtin 1990 [1981], 84). His
spatial theory is derived from his notes on the artistic chronotope, where ‘spatial and
temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole’ (Bakhtin 1990
[1981], 84), showing that it is not only the temporal but also the spatial settings of literature
that impact upon the narrative. The chronotope is a more useful analytical concept than the
vaguer notion of a ‘setting’, because, as Hayden White argues, it ‘directs attention to social
systems of constraints, required repressions, permissible sublimations, strategies of
subordination and domination, and tactics of exclusion, suppression, and destruction
effected by a local system of social encodations’ (White 2010, 240).
35 These novels are not yet available in English translation, but approximate translations of their titles would be
our kingdom and the machine that makes spaniards. valter hugo mãe is one of Portugal’s most influential contemporary
authors. He already, at a relatively young age, has an extensive corpus of works that spans across poetry, children’s
literature, and short stories and novels for adults. He is extremely popular in both Portugal and Brazil and his literature
has been translated into several other languages, including French, German, Spanish and Icelandic. The author uses only
lower case letters in these novels and I have chosen to respect and adhere to his stylistic choice in all quotations.
89
Part 2 Anneliese Hatton The Practicalities of ‘Mapping’ Literature…
By representing a certain chronotope, the author is indicating a specific social system

that will condition the narrative, and when a novel is set within a specified nation questions
of national identity inevitably arise. If an author writes about their own country, and the
intended audience is the same country, certain assumptions are made about cultural
referents common to both. This is certainly the case with the Portuguese author valter hugo
mãe and his tetralogy of which the two novels analysed below form the first and the final
parts, which have been selected for analysis because restrictive spaces are utilised in a
similar manner. Although in some cases the narrative is explicitly set in a Portuguese locale,
in others it only becomes clear when certain details are disclosed later in the text, but these
may not be obvious to those without knowledge of Portuguese history and culture. So how
integral are these elements to the narrative itself? As I believe that the tetralogy is an
exploration of the subaltern elements of Portuguese identity, clearly the fact that all of the
novels are set in Portugal is fundamental. The temporal locations vary across the novels,
from the Middle Ages to the present day, but consistently examine problems that still plague
contemporary Portugal. There are many elements that relate specifically to Portugal, for
example references to the Portuguese dictatorship, the Estado Novo, or a medieval
Portuguese king, Dom Afonso. However, there are other markers that indicate the temporal
and spatial locations, perhaps without the exactitude or proximity you could expect with
luso-specific knowledge.
If, as Robert Tally states, ‘[t]o draw a map is to tell a story, in many ways, and vice
versa’ (Tally 2013, 4), then these markers become vital to the interpretation of a text. When
the setting of a novel is unspecified, the ‘imprecise’ geography of fiction becomes apparent,
and ‘[c]artographers will need to hunt for clues about location, follow inferred routes and
demarcate boundaries which refuse to accord to ‘traditional’ cartographic rules’(Piatti, et al.
2009, 184). By seeking to locate a text within a geospace (a ‘real’ location) for the purposes
of analysis, critics are imposing their own theories upon the text in question, and whether
this is a valid process perhaps depends upon to what extent the role of the author is
considered integral to the textual analysis. If, as Barthes asserts, only the death of the author
allows for the birth of the reader, there is no problem with this type of graphic interpretation,
as ‘a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination’ (Barthes 1977, 147-8), where
Foucault argues that the author function is integral for the comprehension of the text itself.36
When an emphasis is placed on the setting of a narrative, as is clearly the case with
geocritical theory, then the author’s selection of a setting sends a certain message. I argue
that, falling between Barthes and Foucault’s arguments about the role of the author, there
has to be space for both the author and the reader in the interpretation of a text, as aspects
of the narrative have been deliberately selected to evoke certain reactions in the reader.
Clearly in this process questions also arise over the nature of cartography itself. This
depends on how you define both maps and cartography, which are both strongly contested
terms that have changed dramatically in recent years as more academic fields have come to
appropriate them as their own. In order to adapt to this variety of uses, the definition of
36‘No doubt, analysis could discover still more characteristic traits of the author function. I will limit myself to these four,
however, because they seem the most visible and the most important. They can be summarised as follows: (1) the author
function is linked to the juridical and institutional system that encompasses, determines, and articulates the universe of
discourses; (2) it does not affect all discourses in the same way at all times and in all types of civilization; (3) it is not
defined by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to a producer but, rather, by a series of specific and complex
operations; (4) it does not refer purely and simply to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several
selves, to several subjects – positions that can be occupied by different classes of individuals.’ (Foucault 1998, 216)
90
maps necessarily becomes relatively wide. The International Cartographic Association

defines a map as: ‘[a] symbolised representation of a geographical reality, representing
selected features and characteristics, resulting from the creative effort of its author’s
execution of choices, and designed for use when spatial relationships are of primary
relevance’ (emphasis added). A fictitious space is still a geographical reality, but one that has
been created by the author. Just as traditional maps have a variety of purposes and so are
interpretative and subject to change rather than fixed, static entities, literary maps are
subject to the whim of the author as well as how they are utilised by the reader. Robert Tally
explains this point further, arguing that:
Narrative […] is a form of world-making, at least as much as it is a mode of world-

representing, which in the end may come to the same thing. As narrators or writers
survey the territory they wish to describe, they weave together disparate elements in
order to produce the narrative, and these elements may include scraps of other
narratives, descriptions of people or places, images derived from first-hand
observation as well as from secondary reports, legends, myths, and inventions of the
imagination. In producing this patchwork representation of a world (that is, the
narrative itself), the narrator also invents or discovers the world presented in the
narrative. For readers, this narrative makes possible an image of the world, much
like that of a map, and the literary cartography present in one narrative can become
a part of future surveys, rhapsodies, and narratives, or of future narrative maps.
(Tally 2013, 48-9)
Therefore, a literary cartography can be said to be based upon a hybrid of recognisable

geography, designed to evoke certain responses within the reader, and elements of the
unreal, a combination that changes according to the author.
There are many ways of carrying out the process of mapping itself, which depend on
the expected outcome of the analysis. Barbara Piatti has developed a method of beginning
to map a novel, demarcating various types of space common within a text, dividing them
into several categories: setting (where the action takes place), zone of action (several settings
combined), projected space (characters are not present there, but are dreaming of,
remembering, longing for a specific place), marker (a place which is mentioned, indicating
the geographical range and horizon of a fictional space) and route (along which characters
are moving) (Piatti, et al. 2009). These categories may not always be as clearly defined as
indicated here, but they can help to clarify where exactly the action takes place and what
could be considered to be background rather than an active space. Generally, different
spaces can be said to fulfil different functions within literary texts as well as in accordance
with the relevant socio-historical context and indicate far more than just the location of the
action. Take for example, a ‘hut’ as a setting. If the hut is a character’s home in a text, one
assumption can easily be made about the character: that they are of a lower socio-economic
status. However, analytical nuances depend on the contextualization of this hut. A hut would
be a relatively commonplace dwelling in medieval Europe but almost nonexistent in
contemporary times, whereas they are still used as homes in many extra-European settings.
There are also certain associations that come with the notion of ‘home’, for as Bachelard
states, ‘[a] house constitutes a body of images that give mankind [sic] proofs or illusions of
stability’ (Bachelard 1994 [1958], 17). However, when a house is the setting in a literary text
91
it can also be the case that this image of home as sanctuary will be subverted, if not
destroyed. This is why Bachelard argues that a house has little to do with the physical reality
of the building but rather with what it represents, as ‘[a]ll great, simple images reveal a
psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a “psychic state”…’ (Bachelard
1994 [1958], 72). In fiction this “psychic state” is dependent upon how the author wishes to
portray the characters, and so it could be argued that the description of settings reveals more
than a simple narrative strategy that enables readers to better visualize the localization of
the action.
The Limited/Limiting Chronotopes of valter hugo mãe: o nosso reino
In the first novel examined here, o nosso reino, the protagonist is an eight-year-old
boy called benjamim. It is set in a coastal village in Portugal, but the geographic location is
never specified, which makes it appear as if mãe is utilizing this village to represent any
typical one in Portugal. This is reinforced by typical markers of rural Portuguese life, in
particular a church and a small school. It is also reminiscent of the rural villages idealized
by the Estado Novo, as demonstrated by the contest in 1938 to find the ‘most Portuguese
village in Portugal’. Ellen Sapega states that by ‘[u]niting simple rural villagers with local
elites, the contest exalted the authenticity of local traditions and dismissed any impact that
cosmopolitan or “non-Portuguese” influences had on the national character’ (Sapega, 2008,
pp. 146-7). This village is the whole world for benjamim, and its borders should not be
transgressed, as he is warned early on by his mother to ‘never go beyond the street on the
outskirts, where the trees begin is the end of the world’ 37 (mãe 2004, 11). Outside of the
village is also the dwelling of a monstrous character, ‘the saddest man in the world’, who
haunts the lives of benjamim and the other villagers. In chapter one we can already see that
borders have been established, and that the space outside the village has become a projected
space (according to Piatti’s model) that the characters imagine as a nightmarish landscape.
Michel de Certeau argues that every story has these spatial boundaries, and that ‘it is the
partition of space that structures it’ (de Certeau 1984, 123). There is no question that the
world beyond the village is a complete mystery to benjamim, but he longs to discover it, after
learning about other countries at school and believing that the adults could be wrong about
their fear of anywhere else (mãe 2004, 53). The insularity of the village and the fear of
transgressing the borders is intended to evoke the insular nature of the Estado Novo created
by Salazar, where foreigners and foreign-ness were considered detrimental to the cultivation
and preservation of Portuguese identity.
There are only three characters that come from outside of the village in the novel:
senhor hegarty and benjamim’s two uncles. All three are portrayed as different in a
superficial sense, but this difference is met with very different responses by the townspeople.
senhor hegarty seems to simply appear at the edge of the village, ‘a white giant, the size of
houses resembling an intense light or an angel. senhor hegarty was albino and measured
almost two metres’38 (mãe 2004, 20). It is partly because of him that benjamim realizes there
was a world outside of the town, as he came from England, a country he had heard about at
school (Ibid., 53). Hegarty’s ability as a singer in church means that he is accepted and even
37‘nunca sigas além da estrada da vila, onde começam as árvores é o fim do mundo.’
38‘um gigante branco, do tamanho das casas a parecer uma luz intense ou um anjo. o senhor hegarty era albino e media
quase dois metros.’
92
revered by others: ‘our strange and beautiful senhor hegarty, the man with the voice of
angels, the man with the voice of god’ 39 (Ibid., 40), because ‘singing also is a gift of seeing
with the mouth things that only god knows’40 (Ibid., 70). His apparently miraculous
capabilities mean that he remains an outsider, with the townspeople believing that they
cannot reach his level of godliness, and benjamim believes that ‘senhor hegarty passing
through lands [was] like proof of something bigger. a respite for the fearful at the end of life.
a hope in the things on the other side’ 41 (Ibid., 137). However, benjamim’s uncles, having
chosen to leave the town and the country of their own volition, remain marginalized in the
town and even within their family: ‘they seemed like men from other parts, strange,
dandified, with green and yellow vests, trousers with bizarre stripes, white shoes, socks with
a doll design, sunglasses, and other things never seen on the men of our town’42 (Ibid., 106-
7), and ‘they stayed very hidden away, because the people of the town laughed at them and
how they were dressed’43 (Ibid., 108). In spite of the fact that they both had wives in France,
their cosmopolitan appearance means that benjamim has come to think of them as ‘poofs’,
but he does not understand what homosexuality means, and clearly demonstrates the
marginalization caused when transgression of the borders occurs.
In the first chapters benjamim’s movements are very limited to within the village, and
he remains restricted to this zone of action although other markers are mentioned to
demonstrate their forbidden nature. The novel is set in the transitional period around the
revolution of 1974, and benjamim states that ‘at that time, after the 25 th of April, many
people thought that the liberties were greater, much greater than they had hoped’ 44 (mãe
2004, 104). From this point onwards, it appears that he and others take advantage of these
liberties, with foreign influences entering and benjamim himself crossing the village
boundary. These actions have severe repercussions for benjamim, as his life is thrown into
turmoil for transgressing not only the rules of the adults by leaving the village, and at the
same time, moving himself outside of societal norms (which is also portrayed in numerous
non-spatial ways throughout the novel). At the end, benjamim has gone so far beyond the
space allocated to him by adults that he is unable to return and relegated to the woods
outside the village to live a monstrous existence, like the character that was external right at
the beginning of the novel; the saddest man in the world. By portraying the village in this
way, it appears that valter hugo mãe is in accordance with the socio-spatial dialectic of
Castells, who argues that, ‘[s]pace is a material product, in relation with other elements –
among others, men [sic], who themselves enter into particular social relations, which give to
space (and to the other elements of the combination) a form, a function, a social
signification’ (Castells 1977, 115). Thus, valter hugo mãe is portraying how the villagers
themselves have constructed the boundaries that create the limiting space of the village, just
as was the case with Portugal itself under the Estado Novo.
39 ‘o nosso estranho e belo senhor hegarty, o homem com a voz dos anjos, o homem com a voz de deus.’
40 ‘que cantar também é um dom de ver com a boca coisas que só deus sabe.’
41 ‘o senhor hegarty passando pelas terras como prova de algo maior. um descanso para os temerosos do fim da vida. uma
esperança nas coisas do lado de lá.’

42 ‘pareciam homens de outras bandas, estranhos, garridos, com camisolas amarelas, vermelhas, calças com riscas
bizarras, sapatos brancos, meias com bonecos desenhados, óculos de sol, e outras coisas nunca vistas nosh omens da
nossa vila.’
43 ‘ficavam muito escondidos, porque as pessoas da vila se riam deles e como se vestiam.’
44 ‘nessa altura, depois do vinte e cinco de abril, muitas pessoas pensaram que as liberdades eram maiores, muito
maiores, do que o esperado.’

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The Limited/Limiting Chronotopes of valter hugo mãe: a máquina de

fazer espanhóis
In a máquina de fazer espanhóis, valter hugo mãe demonstrates the function of space
in an even more explicit way, with the protagonist, antónio silva, forced to move into an old
people’s home (ironically called in Portuguese lar da feliz idade, or home of the happy age)
following the death of his wife. The spatial boundaries of this home are quickly apparent, as
‘the home cannot fit more than ninety-three people, and, for each one that enters, another
must leave. the exit is painful but quick’45 (mãe 2010, 34), and this capacity and rapid
movement of the inhabitants demonstrates their anonymity and the transition from
individual identities to a mere number. silva's room is likened to a prison cell, where ‘the
window does not open and, if the glass broke, the old iron bars would keep the people inside
the building’46 (mãe 2010, 29-30), which reinforces the inhabitants’ feeling that they are
being held there against their will. The inhabitants move within the home, but these
movements are conditioned by a strictly defined schedule, and thus the space is constructed
according to the function given to it. This conforms to Perec’s thoughts on apartment design,
where ‘in the ideal dividing-up of today’s apartments functionality functions in accordance
with a procedure that is unequivocal, sequential and nycthemeral. The activities of the day
correspond to slices of time, and to each slice of time there corresponds one room of the
apartment’ (Perec 2008, 28). The home is further divided into a right and left wing, and
moving from the right to the left implies that death is imminent, as this is where the sickest
inhabitants reside: one resident, esteves, turns one hundred years old and then is placed in
one of these rooms, ‘with a view over the dead and with the company of one of the biggest
vegetables’47 (mãe 2010, 145). This spatial movement reinforces the idea that time is linear
for the inhabitants and there is only one route that can be taken to exit the home, in both
spatial and temporal terms, as can be seen after the death of esteves: ‘esteves had already
been discreetly taken from the director’s office to the home’s morgue. we already knew the
orders, nobody could access the morgue. we would only go in there with eyes closed, we used
to say, only when our turn came’48 (mãe 2010, 169). From the morgue, their final destination
is the cemetery, conveniently located outside of the left wing of the home, and this is perhaps
the only place the residents are allowed to visit freely, but the protagonist notes that ‘the
cemetery is a place of troublesome life. it reveals a life on the threshold of the
comprehensible that happens in the eyes of those who are accustomed to almost no
movement’49 (mãe 2010, 119). In contrast to the cemetery, that almost plays a part of the
space of the home itself, the right side of the home is flanked by a square, where life is
happening, but the inhabitants of the home can only observe and not participate: ‘i went to
look through the window to see the children passing by on bicycles in the garden and told
him, when I entered here the first time they wanted to sell me happiness through these
45‘o lar não suporta mais do que noventa e três pessoas, e, para que uma entre, outra tem de sair. a saída é dolorosa mas
rápida.’
46 ‘a janela não abre e, se o vidro se partir, as grades de ferro antigas seguram as pessoas do lado de dentro do edifício.’
47 ‘com vista para os mortos e na companhia de um vegetal dos grandes.’
48 ‘o esteves já tinha sido discretamente levado do gabinete do director para a morgue do lar. já sabíamos as ordens,
ninguém podia aceder à morgue. só lá entraríamos de olhos fechados, costumávamos dizer, só quando chegasse a nossa
vez.’
49 ‘o cemitério é o lugar de uma incómoda vida. acusa uma vida no limiar do perceptível que acontece aos olhos de quem
se habitua ao movimento quase nenhum.’

94
children as if this was enough life for those holed up in here and to prove that people are still
born for whom life is just beginning’50 (mãe 2010, 131). This boundary reinforces the division
between the elderly and the rest of the population, but in contrast to the village in o nosso
reino, it is constructed externally to keep the inhabitants in, obscuring the reality of ageing
to maintain the illusion of the lar da feliz idade.
The projected space within a máquina de fazer espanhóis is the same as the zone of
action of o nosso reino: the Estado Novo. However, within the flashbacks to this period, in
comparison to the restricted space imposed on him in the home, antónio silva seems
relatively free to move as he pleases, but this freedom is not all it appears. All of the
inhabitants are affected by having lived through the dictatorship, and their behaviour is
seemingly shaped by the chronotope of this period: ‘we did everything for the church because
the conventions of the time were much more rigid than that which the freshness of our youth
allowed us to desire. the castrating inheritance of an education with trips to mass still
marked us, but, above all, a difficulty in understanding what others expected of our
conduct’51 (mãe 2010, 95). The necessity of adherence to state-imposed norms and
regulations seems to have left the Portuguese with little idea of their personal identity, which
could perhaps mean they would be perfectly suited for the anonymity of the home. However,
its limiting space, rather than enforcing their identity as limited, makes the inhabitants, and
antónio silva in particular, fight against their linear progression towards the inevitable, just
as benjamim railed against the boundaries of the village. However, in both cases, attempts
to question and fight against the chronotopes constructed by mãe are ultimately
unsuccessful, reinforcing the rigidity of both the linearity of time and of the constraints of
the national space of Portugal.
Conclusion
It can be said, then, that the spaces represented in o nosso reino and a máquina de
fazer espanhóis are representative of the social structure of the Estado Novo and that the
boundaries at that time were not just imposed and enforced by the state but became a part
of the life of every person, to the extent that even after the revolution the boundaries were
still in place. This is why I have called this the limited/limiting space of Portugal, because it
was both at the same time, however this was not always outwardly evident. This is, I believe,
how geocritical examinations of texts can be hugely beneficial, in order to analyse the
implicit spatialities within fiction and make them explicit. Authors create a fictitious world
for their characters with certain intentions of how this space conditions the narrative, but a
‘complete reading’ (if this can ever really be achieved) can only be attained when the intent
of the author is analyzed alongside socio-cultural interpretations of these spaces of the
audience.
50 eu pus-me a olhar pela janela a ver no jardim as crianças que passavam de bicicleta e disse-lhe, quando aqui entrei da
primeira vez quiseram vender-me a felicidade por estas crianças passando como se fosse bastate vida para quem se
empoleira aqui a comprovar que ainda nascem pessoas e ainda há quem esteja a começar tudo’
51 ‘nós fizemos tudo pela igreja porque as convenções, à época, eram muito mais rígidas do que aquilo que a frescura da
nossa juventude nos permitia almejar. ainda nos marcavam as heranças castradoras de uma educação com idas à missa,
mas, sobretudo, uma dificuldade em cortar com o que os outros esperariam da nossa conduta’
95
References
1. Bachelard, G., 1994 [1958], The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press.
2. Bakhtin, M.M., 1990 [1981], "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel:
Notes toward a Historical Poetics" In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, by
M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by C. Emerson and M.
Holquist, 84-258, Austin: University of Texas Press.
3. Barthes, R., 1977, "The Death of the Author" In Image Music Text, 142-148, London:
Fontana Press.
4. Castells, M., 1977, The Urban Question, London: Edward Arnold.
5. Certeau, M. de, 1984, The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by S. Rendall,
Berkeley and Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.
6. Foucault, Michel. 1998. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. New York: The New
Press.
7. mãe, v.h., 2010, a máquina de fazer espanhóis, Carnaxide: Editora Objectiva.
— 2004, o nosso reino, Lisbon: QuidNovi.
8. Moretti, F., 1998, Atlas of the European Novel, London: Verso.
9. Perec, G., 2008, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, London: Penguin Classics.
10. Piatti, B., A.K. Reuschel, H.R. Bar, W. Cartwright, and I. Hurni, 2009, "Mapping
literature: towards a geography of fiction" In Cartography and Art, edited by W.
Cartwright, G. Gartner and A. Lehn, 177-192, Springer: Wiesbaden.
11. Sapega, E.W., 2008, Consensus and Debate in Salazar's Portugal: Visual and
Literary Negotiations of the National Text, 1933-1948, Pennsylvania: Penn State
Press.
12. Soja, E.W., 1989, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical
Social Theory, London; New York: Verso.
13. Tally, R.T., 2013, Spatiality: The New Critical Idiom, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
14. White, H., 2010, "The "Nineteenth Century" as Chronotope" In The Fiction of
Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, by H. White, 237-247,
Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
96
DRIVING FORCES IN LITERATURE: EFFECTS OF FUSION WITH THE HISTORICAL
DETERMINISM
Magdalena Brodziak
Complexity and Dependencies Between Determinism and Anti-Determinism
The chosen topic entitled “Driving forces in literature: Effects of fusion with the
historical determinism” cannot be solved with understanding of literature canon alone.
What is more, literature in that case should be interpreted not as generator, but as Marie-
Henri Beyle, commonly known as Stendhal, wrote in The Red and the Black: A novel is a
mirror carried along the road.
Before corresponding to the direct point of the paper which is defining the historical
determinism, classifying all historico-societal driving forces and reflecting their inscription
in literature, the audience have to deal with overall multidimensionality thus complexity of
theme which means that firstly we have to be aware that the concept of historical
determinism has become a part of nomenclature of disciplines such as philosophy or
cognitivism, religion, geopolitics, history or economics.
Secondly, the definition varies depending on particular movements within the
category. For example, the meaning of historical determinism in Hegelianism is clearly
stated as the predeterminer of fate; several quotations from Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit or Introduction to the Philosophy of History summarize the genuineness of the
concept and amplify it by several arguments. In addition, Karl Marx is responsible for
Marxist definition which propagates a similar construct: a symbiosis of Dialectical
Materialism and Economic Determinism. On the other hand, there are figures such as Rosa
Lichtenstein or Immanuel Kant who posit that determinism is somehow a deformed
theorem.
Thirdly, when reflecting on the role of historical determinism on shaping and
animating the concept of determining forces in the mind of a writer, another division based
on dichotomy is needed. The audience have to recognize the choice of the writer in inscribing
the behavioural act of historical determinism and chronology in his or her novel. There are
two options:
 the first one, which I will call passive, and which may be defined as outlining
by the writer a single period of time;
 the second one, let's say active, is a writer's cognitive reaction to ever-changing
periods of dynamic time.
And due to this general plurality of the matter I was not biased toward utilizing a great
text of Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo prepared for Annual Review of Economics
entitled “Under the Thumb of History: Political Institutions and the Scope for Action”.
Paradoxically, their essay from 2013 devoted mainly to geopolitics and economics indicates
the thesis which seldom may be found in philosophical texts, but is essential for the
presented topic. Their article is not only about strict border between the sense of
determinism and anti-determinism, presented arguments and encouragment for the
97
Part 2 Magdalena Brodziak Driving Forces in Literature…
audience to estimate both systems; the key factors are that the above mentioned text does
not force any subjective perspective.
Historical Determinism in Themes of Holocaust, Homosexuality and

Totalitarianism
In accordance with so-called canvas of this paper which emphasise

multidimensionality and propagate freedom in activity of understanding temporal
problems, I would like to introduce the second part of the leading topic of the paper, which
is literature, on the same condition of division. Thus if above mentioned division belongs
only to categories of history, literature would be grouped in two ways - considering novels
and descriptions of the most influential determining forces in those. The chosen novels are
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Germinal by Emil Zola,
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Lubiewo by Michał Witkowski, Paul Celan: Poet,
Survivor, Jew and Prague Orgy by Philip Roth. The second categorization refers to
determining forces included in most novels which are: Holocaust, totalitarianism and
homosexuality.
As for Holocaust, there are two styles of writing about this question which are
considered to be semi-cognitive. It may also be said that answering the question 'Should I
write on the topic of Holocaust or am I not allowed to do this?' generated the division of
those who in brilliant decorum wants to penetrate the trauma and those who think about
Holocaust as monument. The first fraction is in my opinion represented by writers such as
Howard Jacobson, Art Spiegelman, Leonard Cohen or Philip Roth. Their novels Kalooki
Nights, a comic book Maus, Beautiful Losers and Prague Orgy are recognized as
scandalizing books not only by implementation of sex and cynicism while discussing about
Jewish trauma. The presented images of these discussions are rather bitter and are based on
protagonist's struggle with trauma using an aggressive negation of conformity and dogmas.
The second writing style is represented by writers such as Elie Wiesel (1928 - ), Paul Celan
(1920 - 1970) or Imre Kertesz (1929 - 2016). Those writers, in contrast to Jacobson or Roth,
in their novels conform with symbolic words of Theodor Adorno who said that writing poetry
after the Holocaust is just barbaric (Adorno 1983). This conformity which is equivalent to
Adorno's famous dictum, may be acknowledged as the reason of their deeply melancholic
and naturalistic styles of writing about Endlösung and is characterized with elegance,
chronological order and general severity of style. Respect for timeless and universal sense of
Adorno's words is expressed by Wiesel in his interview for The Paris Review:
I didn’t want to write a book on the Holocaust. To write such a book, to be

responsible for such experiences, for such words—I didn’t want that. I wanted to
write a commentary on the Bible, to write about the Talmud, about celebration,
about the great eternal subjects: love and happiness (Friedman 1978).
This matter emphasises that the symbiosis of time and literature is of a great
importance in this paper. As may be checked, aforementioned writers lived in the core-
period inscribed in their books and that is why their method of creation of the protagonist
and thier generalium of writing a prosaic text have a sense of confession and memoir. For
example, Night by Elie Wiesel is charactrized as "not a novel, it’s an autobiography. It’s a
98
memoir. It’s testimony" (Friedman 1978); the transfer may be interpreted as an analogy
between the author and the protagonist.
At the other end of the scale are writers who were born in post-Holocaust period, too
young to remember that time therefore do not have any naturalistic experience of
Endlosung.
It should be noted that there is a great correlation between determining forces
inscribed in literary art – Holocaust, socialism, homosexuality – which are emphasised in
my article because of their constant and visible utilization in modern literature. It means
that all three inspirations for a writer are subject to the aforementioned formula of time and
art. The juxtaposition of the proses of Virginia Woolf (Orlando, Mrs Dalloway) and Alan
Hollinghurst (The Swimming Pool Library) or Michal Witkowski (Lubiewo) should be
considered as the most glaring example of the above mentioned thesis referring to
determining force of homosexuality.
In order to understand the structure of dynamism and fluidity of the literary conceit
such as homosexuality in interaction with periods of time, the audience has to recognize the
socio-historical conditions of epochs, which would facilitate the identification of a reason
and the effect of chosen linguistic strategy when writing about homosexuality.
This sexual orientation is illustrated in Mrs Dalloway and Orlando by Virginia Woolf
as mysteriously concealed, which had been caused by external predeterminers of epoch. The
writer lived in a period (1882-1941) which was, opposed to France, extremely unfriendly to
homosexuality and lesbianism. The general prejudice toward homonormativity was
generated earlier on the occasion of Oscar Wilde's trial of condemnation. As Florence
Tamagne in A History of Homosexuality in Europe claimed:
Oscar Wilde's trial, while it was unique in terms of the prominence of the individual
in question and the scandal it caused, is just one of many examples of the outbursts
of moral panic which haunted Victorian England. Wilde's sentence was the
consummation of the victory of the Puritan Party and it crystallized in the public
view the image of the homosexual as a 'corrupter of youth', a source of danger and
depravity (Tamagne 2006: 17)
Paradoxically, the author adds that case accidentally unveiled that homosexual
lifestyle had been deeply rooted in conservatist London.
Although aforementioned incident took place in 1895 and was eventually dropped, it
may be interpreted symbolically as a generator of societal aversion to homosexuals in the
future, which had lasted until 1960s. Woolf published Mrs Dalloway and Orlando nearly
thirty years after the juridical events in 1925 and 1928, but the reader may notice a subtlety
and veiled meanings when writing about sexual orientation. In Inconsequence: Lesbian
representation and the Logic of Sexual Sequence, Jagose emphasise a fact that
homoeroticism in Mrs Dalloway is based mainly on psychoanalysis of characters such as
Septimus or Clarissa Dalloway; therefore, the images of non-heteronormativity are indirect
and require interpretation of the readers. On the other hand, The Hours, a novel published
in 1998 by Michael Cunningham provides a direct illustration of homosexuality – a romantic
relationship of Clarissa and Sally Seton, Laura Brown's kiss with Kitty, non-heteronormative
attitude of Mary Krull or Walter's and Oliver St. Ives' lifestyle.
99
The Swimming Pool Library by Alana Hollinghurst and Lubiewo by Michał

Witkowski provide an absolutely different type of creating homosexual protagonists and
surrounding. Boldness of these writers may be noted in naturalistic descriptions of love
between two men including sexual activities. Especially, the second novel presents an
additional benefit, which is a confirmation of the thesis of witnessing the socio-political
changes. Dynamic social position of the surrounding is especially visible in Lubiewo in
which, apart from the main plot, the reader may observe the political realities of Poland.
Moreover, above mentioned frames of styles determined by chronology when writing
about homosexuality are just exemplary reflections of a reader. Thinking of the phenomenon
of time as a category of fundamental frontier in discussion of homonormativity, other
schemes may be considered. Therefore, the symbolic frontier, which regulates the course of
thinking and clarifies the division, may also be found in pairs, such as, modern period –
postmodern period, pre-Stonewall period – post-Stonewall period, period of medical
negative view on homosexuality – American Psychological Association's declassification of
homosexualism as a mental disorder in 1973 etc.
Especially the date of Stonewall's riots or negation of stating that homosexuals are
subject of "crimes against nature" should be emphasised as that confirms Abhijit V. Banerjee
and Esther Duflo's words that: "Chance obviously plays an important role in determining
the exact shape things take, but more importantly, determinists would not rule that the
possibility that from time to time, certain cataclysmic events occur to change the destiny of
nations" (Abhijit and Duflo 2013)
In novels with totalitarian context, the parallels are seen in Dicken's Oliver Twist,
Zola's Germinal and Orwell's Animal Farm respectively. Due to this specific order we are
able to notice the predetermining role of politics in writing styles of both active and passive
conditions of determinism.
In first two texts socialism is envisioned as a system of equality, which politically,
economically and ethically has a potential to be a dominant regime in future. It has to be
noted that Emil Zola shared his views with Charles Fourier, a famous French philosopher
who regarded inter alia social cooperation, salary for workers that is proportional to their
contribution, revolution of the branch of industry.
By writing Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens criticised the capitalist manner of abusing
workers, especially child laborers. Anger of the writer had focused on the hypocrisy of the
rich who created the impression of helping the poorest while they made them dependent on
the wealthy in the Victorian period (Ford 2012). What is more, the great appreciation of his
works and general respect was expressed by Karl Marx who stated that:
"the present splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and

eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have
been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put
together" (in Raina 1986: 137)
Animal Farm by George Orwell may be interpreted as a multidimensional text as it

contains a great deposit of allegory, pamphlet, dystopian novella or satire. The main catalyst
of constructing the novel was author's great disillusion with the Socialist ideas proposed by
the Soviet regime. Orwell had presented the panorama of communist society by disguising
each person of the community in animal characterization. Consequently, the leader of the
100
farm is a pig called Napoleon (based on Joseph Stalin), his serious competitor for taking
over the control on the farm is also a pig (based on Leon Trotsky), a rather naive and slavish
carthorse is an embodiment of commonality, donkey is negating every impulse of rebellion,
a sheep represents a mindless society responding passively to propaganda etc.
As it was mentioned before, the audience when referring to genre of Animal Farm
may use different terminology, but its quizzical and dystopian character is unquestionable.
It should be noted that the style of the novel was directly generated by autobiographical
issues of Orwell's lifetime. He began his writing career in a journal owned by the French
Communist, he fought in the Spanish Civil War, he was fascinated by anarchism and negated
Stalinism, and what is the most determining aspect, in 1938 he joined the Independent
Labour Party. Orwell, like James Madison, “assumed that socialism would work if only the
political institutions protected against the abuse of power” (Makovi 2015), democratic
socialism is a remedy to totalitarian deposit of socialism or criticised political mechanism of
the movement.
It has to be said that Orwell's novel was firstly published on 17 th August 1945 while
Oliver Twist and Germinal were issued in the 19th century. The dates of writing processes
here are of great importance as they perfectly parallel the social background of socialist
movement in history. 19th century is a time of symbolic rise of socialism, which meant
general approval for the thoughts of Marxists attempting to eliminate social injustice and
poverty of the workers. As Bryan Goodrich precisely claimed, the general popularity and the
reverberation of idea is to be found in fact that “These theories were a response, a reaction,
to their time and their country” (Goodrich 2007). In contrast, George Orwell's Animal Farm
was influenced mostly by anti-Stalinism reflection, which was generated by the sense of
betraying the social revolution by USSR.
An Addition of a Particle of Science
In order to make the above mentioned hypothesis of crucial role of driving force based
on history on literature complementary, explained concepts of Holocaust, homosexuality
and socialism has to enriched by one more example of book which formulate similar
reflection. Grzegorz Raubo, an professor at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poland, in
one of his books published in 2011, introduces an interesting analysis in which he adopts old
astronomical images on the baroque ground. This suggests that science may also be taken
into account while grouping and hierarchizing determining forces in literature.
References
1. Adorno, Theodor W., 1983, “Cultural Criticism and Society.” Prisms, Cambridge: MIT
Press. 17-34.
2. Banerjee, Abhijit V. and E. Duflo., 2013, “Under the Thumb of History: Political
Institutions and the Scope for Action”, Annual Review of Economic, Annual Reviews,
vol. 6(1): 951-971
3. Dickens, Ch., 2005, Oliver Twist. Rytm: Warsaw
4. Dickstein, M., 2005, A Mirror in the Roadway: Literatur in the Real World.
Princeton University Press: Princeton
101
5. Ford, A. “Charles Dickens: a champion of the poor”. Socialism Today, May 2012 Issue
158
6. Friedman, J.S., Elie Wiesel, The Art of Fiction No. 79, The Paris Review, Spring 1984
No. 91
7. Hickey, J., 2013, “Homosexuality: The Mental Illness That Went Away”,
Behaviourism and Mental Health, January 2, available at
http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2011/10/08/homosexuality-the-mental-
illness-that-went-away/
8. Goodrich, B., 2007, “The Rise of European Socialism: A Short Analysis of 19th Century
Socialist Thought”, Econ 112 European Economic History, December 2007, available
at
http://www.academia.edu/3888398/The_Rise_of_European_Socialism_A_Shor
t_Analysis_of_19th_Century_Socialist_Thought
9. Hegel, G.W.F., 2004, The Philosophy of History, Dover Publications: New York
10. Jagose, A., 2002, Inconsequence: Lesbian Representation and the Logic of Sexual
Sequence,
11. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London
12. Makovi, M., 2015, “Two Opposing Literary Critiques of Socialism: George Orwell
Versus Eugen
13. Richter and Henry Hazzlit”, International Journal of Pluralism and Economics
Education
14. Orwell, G., 2006, Folwark zwierzęcy, trans. B. Zborski, Warszawskie Wydawnictwo
Literackie MUZA S.A: Warsaw
15. Raina, B., 1986, Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. The University of Wisconsin
Press:
16. Wisconsin
17. Raubo, G., 2011, Ludzie się na górne zapatrują obroty: astronomiczne konteksty
literatury
18. polskiego baroku, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM: Poznań
19. Ami E. Stearns and Thomas J. Burns, "About the Human Condition in the Works of
Dickens and Marx" in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4, 2005 ,
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol13/iss4/10
20. Witkowski, M., 2004, Lubiewo. Ha!Art: Warsaw
21. Woolf, V., 1996, Mrs Dalloway. Wordsworth: Hertfordshire
22. Zola, E., 2007, Germinal. Wordsworth: Hertfordshire
102
SPATIAL PERCEPTION OF RURAL POCKETS AND HEALTHY URBAN
REGENERATION
Marta Bujanda Miguel
Balance, understood as a state of equilibrium, is a key concept when studying

interactions in urban spaces. Pairs of concepts such as “global-local”, “own-foreign” or
“traditional-modern” are directly involved in the architectural discourse and the urban
practice, with their interaction resulting in a determined common perception of the city.
Their potential is such in the architectural and urbanistic fields that they have a decisive
impact in ideological, economic, historic, social and cultural aspects in societies built around
them.
During the Industrial Revolution, the city understood as a container for things and
bodies, run out of capacity and overgrew its own limits expanding and assimilating nearby
built-up areas. Urbanistic conceptual schemes were forced to adapt and, in the process, the
perception of what was local and own changed as the environment transformed more rapidly
than common perception could accommodate. The urban fabric expanded till the edge of
and beyond nearby satellite villages and industrial zones, assimilating these built areas as
parts of a new higher entity: the city. Hills and forests were not spare, and became subject
of this annexation in many cases.
This process pushed the transformation of the understanding of traditional
constructions. The metamorphoses of the environment turned them into new objects from
a symbolic point of view, or lead to an irreversible loss of meaning; consequently provoking
the appearance of a void in the perception of these forms out of context. This urban growth
started a transformation process of traditional objects with attached meanings to new
developing forms and different symbolic meanings attached to them.
Figure 01: Scheme of urban growth in time. Source: Author.
The urban fabric has dramatically changed ever since, and in the current never-
stopping urbanization society, not only are whole areas demolished to start over, but also
against all odds, local, traditional pockets survive in some cases. These pockets generally
consist of former peripheral areas assimilated by urban growth of nearby cities. They often
comprise low density spaces with a strong recognizable rural attachment inserted in urban
landscapes. And this is why we will refer to them as rural pockets in this paper.
103
Part 2 Marta Bujanda Miguel Spatial Perception…
This interaction and relation among modern, global urban fabric and local, own
surviving elements must be studied to comprehend the space-perception of current cities as
they play different but important roles. To support the theoretical analysis of this relation
and its impact in our perception of urban spaces, the city of Ljubljana (Slovenia) is presented
as a study case in this paper. The vernacular structures selected are kozolci, rural traditional
structures that exemplify rural pockets trapped in overgrowing urban spaces.
Method
The method of analysis used is based on Hegel’s logic applied to the dialectical
method. The already introduced pair of dialectical concepts will be determined as opposites
that exclude each other from the space perception, establishing a thesis. An antithesis
follows presenting the non-exclusive presence of local and global concepts and the
possibility of coexisting without irrevocably negating each other. Finally, the connection
between objects and phenomena will be presented, together with their link via intermediary
objects and the effect of socialization and schematization in the understanding of the city as
an organism in an environment and its perception. As a result, a synthesis of the
complementary nature of this pair of dialectical concepts is shown.
Urban Sustainable Development
From an anthropological approach, a city can be understood as an ecosystem on its

own, composed of different biological and abiotic elements which must be diverse and
productive in time. The interaction among them must have a balance to ensure each system
does not restrain but reinforce the others for mutual benefit in order to be healthy. For a
city, enduring in time is its main purpose as it is for any living being, and thus, sustainable
development becomes fundamental.
However, this is not easy. Elements in a city do not follow the same tempo as exposed
by Wegener (1998), whereas number of population and employment may rapidly change,
other aspects such as land use, housing and networking follow a much slower pace.
Accommodating and adapting to an evolving environment is a relentless process inherent to
the city. The urban fabric has an unstoppable will to change and evolve, and a balance is
required among its components’ development in time and the adaptation possibilities of its
inhabitants to accommodate spatial perception in a healthy manner.
104
Figure 02: Elements of a city and speed of change based on Wegener (1998). Source:
Author.
From an urban approach urban sustainability, it is a pattern of use of that combines
environmental, economic and social resources held together by cultural aspects, to satisfy
the needs of its inhabitants and to ensure the survival of the city as an entity of its own in
time. All these aspects are interconnected as the physical location where it stands, with its
climate, natural resources and geography, influences to a certain degree the culture
developed around it, and determines the convenience of certain trades and implementation
of specific economic sectors. It is a two-sided relationship where urban societies come
together and where every change have a short or long-term effect. Finding a balance that
allows the development of the different aspects without surpassing the other factors'
adaptation capacity is crucial.
Given the capital city of Ljubljana, with 282.994 inhabitants and a metropolitan
surface of 275km2 (www.stat.si), an eighth of the Slovene population lives in this urban
setting named European Green Capital 2016 by the EU. Compared to its neighbouring
foreign capital cities, Ljubljana is a small city being Zagreb approximately 3 times bigger
(790,107 inhabitants), or having Budapest 7 times more inhabitants (1,757,618).
Throughout the country kozolec can be seen as “it is the most extended drying shed
type in Slovenia” (Bujanda Miguel 2014: 34). There area up to five different types of kozolec
but “all these constructions have been built with a clear purpose: drying and storing crops
for later usage, protecting them from the moisture, rodents and vermin. […] The same main
parts can be identified in each one of them from bottom to top: structure, main body, and
roof” (Bujanda Miguel 2014: 29) and they all have a very strong rural attachment.
And yet, kozolci, rural structures typical from agrarian farming lands are also found
in Ljubljana. They are disconnected in form, and use from the city. They belong to rural
areas, for agricultural purposes and even given these conditions, they are outdated drying
structures theoretically doomed to cease because of technological advances. But this “rural
pockets” are part of the city and share the urban space with more city-like structures. City
and kozolci are antonyms coexisting in the same environment and the analysis of their
dialectic relation between them is relevant if we aim to a healthy urban development.
105
In this context, it is licit to ask what happens in these annexed ecosystems within the
city that do not belong to their surrounding environment: do they enrich or unbalance the
spatial perception of the city? How do we perceive rural pockets out of context?
Perception of the City
“Our immediate awareness of the phenomenal world is given through perception.”

And even more importantly, “we are highly dependent upon seeing our surroundings in a
satisfactory manner” (Norberg-Schulz 1968: 27). The environment constantly bombards us
with huge amounts of information, which provokes a continuous subconscious selection
process of stimulus that prevents us from exhausting our brains. After this selection comes
the judging or interpreting what is more useful for each given situation, a conscious process.
This conscious process is shaped during our socialization, and it consists of stereotyped
reactions and a coherence system to given situations which tells us what is important and
what is not so much. It provides us with the tools to face everyday situations and also
uncommon events. Our coherence system selects the most relevant aspects when
interpreting a given object or situation, not by examining it as an isolated entity, but as a
part of bigger totality. “It defines under which conditions we attain an object” (Norberg-
Schulz 1968: 34), it determines our perception and by summing up objects located around
us, our spatial perception too.
Phenomena and Objects
There are two key concepts in spatial perception: phenomena and object. Phenomena
is every “something” which may be experienced, a fact or circumstance observed or
observable. An object is the manifestation of an array of phenomena and it may be physical,
social or cultural. An object exists always, while the phenomena may be present or not. We
provide a representative function to phenomena, and objects are defined by properties –
phenomena – appearing more frequently in them. Setting a hierarchy of phenomena first,
to order properties of objects to define them, and setting object levels secondly, to rank their
importance in our life, becomes naturally. The attitude linked to this will establish the final
outcome when perceiving the city and its constitutive elements. They are dependent but
different concepts, and this co-dependency must be understood when analysing the space-
perception of a city and its components as the interaction among them can cause a wrong
common space-perception in a city.
“The biologically important objects usually lie deeper than those perceived. Rather
than grasping the thing directly, we perceive a situation where the thing is included as a
possible component” (Norberg-Schulz 1968: 32). Very often we believe we perceive pure
objects when we are not fully attaining them. Thus we constantly estimate properties of
objects overestimating or underestimating them, which is the same as creating intentional
poles and choosing among them to interpret and perceive; creating intermediary objects in
the process. To comprehend these intermediary objects it is crucial to analyse the
circumstances that surround the phenomenal context where they appear and to consider the
possible intentional poles involved.
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The Organism in the Environment
In an urban environment we have to find our way through a multitude of objects and
judge what is more important in every situation. We manage well when an object is a direct
representation of a phenomena - a fact or circumstance observed or observable. But cultural
objects are often different from their physical manifestation, lacking a structural similarity
between phenomena and object. They comprise more information than the immediate
observable characteristics, which is the reason why we get mistaken more often in their
perception.
“What you see depends upon where you are seeing it from. In science, as in all human
affairs, knowledge is inseparable from the people and places employed in producing it”
(Byrne 2001: 38).
The perception of a city not only changes because of the variability in the phenomena
displayed in objects and intermediary objects. The changes in individuals’ socialization,
coherence-system and expectations affect as much to perception. The city is a living
ecosystem that varies in time and presents a different image constantly: by changing its
physical form, distribution of activities within its limits or number of population; by creating
new voids, green areas or new uses; by refurbishing or tearing down constructions and
structures. An object may look different, not because of a direct physical change in it, but
because of a change in its meaning or symbolism in reference to the modified environment.
We cannot forget that any element is not an isolated entity, but a part of a bigger whole.
Therefore, changes in our perception may be created not only by our own personal growth,
but also by physical and intangible changes in the context where an object lays.
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When perceiving a city and rural pockets in it, we are just putting to use our habits of
perception. The different scenarios we faced usually offer many possibilities in
understanding the given phenomena and presented objects. Perception depends on the
variability in the phenomena displayed, but changes in our socialization, coherence system
and expectations affect as much to perception. We may be exposed twice to the same object,
but our perception of it is never the same, in other words, you may encounter the same space
in the city but you will never perceive the same environment twice.
Figure 03: Kozolec in rural and urban settings located in Domžale and Ljubljana.
Source: Author, May 2015.
Rural Pockets in Urban Environments: Kozolec in Ljubljana
A fieldwork conveyed by the author in 2014 showed there are 65 kozolci inside the
ring of the city, being 58 of them used for their original purpose. This local phenomena is in
direct contraposition to global phenomena from the urban layout of the city. And yet, they
are juxtaposed. While streets and avenues organize the city, providing it with a layout where
space is ranked in a global understanding of this ecosystem, rural pockets pierce these
leaders disrupting the perception of order and management given by the urban elements. In
other words, the global phenomena of order given by the objects of typical urban spatial
elements – streets, squares, parks, built blocks – is sometimes not present and replaced by
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the local phenomena perceived through kozolci and their environment as intermediary
objects of the agricultural past of the area.
Figure 04: Result of fieldwork in 2014. Map of the ring of Ljubljana: existing kozolec
according to typology, Path of Remembrance and Comradeship and city contained in it.
Source: Author.
Kozolci in Ljubljana normally present themselves in a rural-like landscape despite
their urban location. This means that not only the vernacular structure disrupts the skyline
of the city, but also the fields surrounding it break its global standardized image. It becomes
common perceiving these rural pockets as empty voids breaking the global intended order
of the system the city provides.
Ljubljana, as any other capital city, has absorbed foreign forms into its own layout.
The ecosystem of the city has adopted in time styles and materials originally from other
regions and countries for reasons that vary from prestige to effectiveness and which won’t
be analysed here as it is not the focus of this paper. What matters is that the foreign is present
throughout the city and it has been deeply intertwined with the local for such a long period
of time, that the social schema perceives it as local and accepts it as own already. In this
framework, kozolci present themselves as an intermediary object of agriculture and
farmlands, and often associated with the idea of outdated past and the phenomena of
rejection from an urban layout point of view: it does not belong to the urban ecosystem.
However, it is this same belonging to the past, and the common perception of ever
being there in the fields, that makes a kozolec traditional from a psychological approach. A
direct association correlates kozolec with local agriculture and tradition. It is an object
present in the environment for so long, that the social perception accepts it as a fixed point
in the social schemata. When individuals moved to Ljubljana, brought with them this
perception and schemata, perceiving them as traditional against the modern objects located
in the urban space. While every other element and object in Ljubljana would transform and
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change, kozolci are somehow invariable: they either are, or are not, but they are anchors in
the landscape; even if it is an urban landscape.
Discussion
Kozolci have been presented through paired opposite concepts that exemplify main
common perception qualities of these objects. As we have seen, kozolci in Ljubljana are local,
own and traditional, and at first sight, they are in continuous fight with the urban elements
of the city, perceived as global, foreign and modern. However, it is possible that urban
objects and rural pockets –in this case kozolci – do not exclude themselves but complement
each other. Introducing “voids” in the urban environment with traditional, local objects and
interrupting the city landscape with a completely different environment, produces a direct
effect in individuals spatial perception of the city. New phenomena manifests – vernacular
tradition – through vernacular drying structures, intermediary objects which provide the
city with a deeper dimension. Cultural objects are added to the spatial perception and
symbolic milieus are revealed through these physical objects and the scenario they present
themselves.
However, it is licit to say not all rural pockets contain cultural objects. As it has been
explained, cultural objects are different from the physical objects we perceive and the first
ones contain more information than the second ones. Thus, by extension it is possible to find
in Ljubljana physical objects, with a structural similarity to cultural objects, which do not
present cultural phenomena and have lost their symbolic milieu, leaving just a rural form
embedded in an urban environment.
Figure 05: Kozolec still in their original use located in the neighbourhood of Golovec
in Ljubljana. Source: Author, May 2015.
“Cities, like all environments, are texts in which are inscribed values, beliefs and the
exercise and struggle for power… But if a city is a text, it is written as well as read, (re)
constructed as well as (re) interpreted and (re) produced as well as consumed” (Byrne 2001:
25). As an ecosystem, diversity in a city is positive as it offers a wider variety of scenarios
and possibilities that enables a global balance. The contrast offered by rural pockets
immersed in urban environments, strengths not only the perception of Ljubljana in this case
from a social point of view, but also their own importance as representations of local
tradition. If a city embraces any incoming visitant and offers it a wide range of activities to
develop and ways of introducing itself to the residents, a city behaves the same with elements
in it, giving them a chance to develop. Like in any biological ecosystem, a rural pocket should
survive depending on what it has to offer to its surrounding environment and take from it:
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sustainable development ensures it will endure. And rural pockets, with kozolci and farming
lands, provide the urban environment with a physical and symbolic milieu, besides a form
and function. The contrast provided makes an individual snap from the adopted perception
and readjust it, making a better approximation to the objects and not assuming the
intermediary elements.
Thus, kozolci can be understood as intermediary objects of cultural and social
phenomena, and the variety of interpretations is immense as it is directly related to the
individual schemata of each person. Perception is not free from emotional content and
influences it irretrievably. But there is a common tacit social value in these structures that
makes them be perceived as part of the history and development of the city. It is logical to
defend the existence of a symbolic milieu attached to this rural pockets with a structural
similarity linked to kozolci, representing this phenomena, or they would have disappeared
already from the urban fabric and would have been replaced by more modern, global
elements.
Conclusion
Individual and unique socialization and coherence system pre-set how each
individual develops its own spatial perception. There is a cultural dimension attached to
kozolci recognized in our subconscious general schemata, presenting a direct structural
similarity that enables our perception to link its value to rural pockets in Ljubljana.
The city is a living ecosystem combined by different elements and micro-systems
providing it with physical diversity, social richness and cultural values. The opposite nature
of its elements does not make it fail but strengths the need for diversity and diversification
of scenarios for a healthy, sustainable survival. The contrast between “local” and “global” in
Ljubljana benefits the spatial perception of the city, making individuals readjust social
expectations and spatial perspective constantly and consequently driving them towards a
better approximation of their environment.
Rural pockets provide this diversity and tension in urban spatial perception. It makes
individuals revise their expectations and schematizations of what a city is and perceive the
unique values of the city. For a healthy urban regeneration, rural pockets must be included
in the city without losing their characteristic values – physical, social or cultural.
There are no two equal cities and the objects present in them should produce a
common perception of uniqueness for their own milieus.
References
1. Buchli, V., 2013, An anthropology of architecture, London: Bloomsbury Publishing

Plc.
2. Bujanda Miguel M., 2014, Kozolec in Ljubljana. An integration urban study,
University of Ljubljana. Ljubljana: Fakulteta za arhitekturo.
3. Bujanda Miguel M., 2014, “Varieties of maize aerial drying sheds across Europe”, AR:
Arhitektura in Raziskave, 2014-1: 27-36.
4. Byrne, D., 2001, Understanding the city, Hampshire: Palgrave.
111
5. Menin, S., 2003, Constructing place: mind and matter, London/New York:
Routledge.
6. Norberg-Schulz, C., 1968, Intentions in architecture, Cambridge: MIT Press.
7. Sasek Divjak, M., 2008, “Urban planning for the strategic spatial development of
Ljubljana”, Urbani izziv, 19/1: 113-145. Ljubljana.
8. Statistical office Republic of Slovenia: Population, available at www.stats.si [date of
access: 10.04.2016]
9. Wegener, M., 1998: Erkundungen zukünftiger Raumstrukturen. (IRPUD) Institut für
Raumplanung, Universität Dortmund, Dortmund: Dortmunder Beiträge zur
Raumplanung.
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THE TIME OF THE WALK – USING PAUL CELAN’S POEM TODTNAUBERG AS A
FIELD GUIDE TO WALKING THE HEIDEGGER RUNDWEG AT TODTNAUBERG
Mark Riley
In A Phenomenology of Landscape, Christopher Tilley argues that:-
A landscape is a series of named locales, a set of relational places linked by paths,

movements and narratives. It is a ‘natural’ topography perspectivally linked to the
existential Being of the body in societal space. It is a cultural code for living, an
anonymous ‘text’ to be read and interpreted, a writing pad for inscription, a scape of
and for human praxis, a mode of dwelling and a mode of experiencing (Tilley, 34).
These ‘locales’ are also temporal events that are mapped by the experiential activities
of walking and thinking.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) wrote extensively on the
significance of ‘dwelling’ and ‘place’ in relation to ‘Being’ and the importance of poetic
language to philosophical thought. One of his published collections of essays is entitled
Wegmarken (which translates as ‘pathmarks’)52 and is an edited collection that maps a
landscape of thinking. The title reflects this desire to orientate oneself in thought through
relational strategies that suggest the importance of a proximal experience of the world. This
sense of an understanding of intimacy and proximity through language permeated his
writing as did the importance and particularity of time and place. To one particular place
Heidegger gave a ‘special legitimacy’. This was a small wooden hut (approximately 6 x 7
metres) situated on the north side of a valley facing south, in the mountains of the Black
Forest south of Freiburg and close to the village of Todtnauberg. 53 This building and its
surrounding landscape have been interpreted at different times as a retreat for a thinker
from the intensities of academic and political concerns; a place of intense routines of living,
thinking and writing and a site of historical encounters.
This essay will examine the site of the hut via reflections made on a number of walks
undertaken following the route of the Heidegger Rundweg (opened in 2002). It will explore
the relationship between a particular location and the thinking and writing that took place
there. It will use Paul Celan’s poem Todtnauberg (1967) as a field marker for the event of
walking and thinking. The text will be a topographic exercise pervaded by histories that at
different moments have been variously spoken and unspoken; seen and unseen. The
descriptions of the walks will attempt to orientate these histories as temporal affects, acting
as markers for what continues to remain both visible and invisible at Todtnauberg. In his
1934 essay, Why Do I Stay in the Provinces? Heidegger wrote:
52Pathmarks, edited and translated by William McNeil and published by The Cambridge University Press (2010).
53In the prologue to Adam Sharr’s book, Heidegger’s Hut, Andrew Benjamin states that “…the hut, rather than involving
a merely literal commitment to the countryside or the provinces involves a commitment to a particular relationship
between philosophy and place” (Benjamin in Sharr, xix).
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Part 2 Mark Riley The Time of the Walk…
On the steep slope of a wide mountain valley in the southern Black Forest at an
elevation of 1150 meters, there stands a small ski hut. The floor plan measures six
meters by seven. The low hanging roof covers three rooms: the kitchen which is also
the living room, a bedroom and a study. Scattered at wide intervals throughout the
narrow base of the valley and on the equally steep slope opposite, lie farmhouses
with their large over-hanging roofs. Higher up the slope the meadows and pasture
lands lead to the woods with its dark fir-tress, old and towering…This is my work
world… (Heidegger in Sheehan, 27)
In this essay and later The Festival Address, (made as part of a celebratory event at
Todtnauberg in 1966) Heidegger made a specific claim for the activities of thinking and
writing at the hut. He argued that his philosophical work (did) not take place as an aloof,
eccentric study but “belongs right in the midst of peasants work” (Heidegger in Mugerauer,
524). In the Festival Address, Heidegger proposed that the thinkers task/craft does not
merely belong together with other skills of members of the community, but all derive their
power and continuity specifically from the landscape where they are grounded and
sheltered. In this sense, the hut and its locale are steeped in Heidegger’s concerns with
authenticity and rootedness and, dwelling. Writer Daniel Maier-Katkin argues that; “In
addition to his fantasies about German destiny, Heidegger’s thought also intersected with
Nazis propaganda on the authenticity of rural life, especially at his rustic cottage at
Todtnauberg in the Black Forest” (Maier-Katkin, 79).
Certainly the essay, Why Do I Say in the Provinces, emerged at a particular historical
moment for Germany and at a particular point in Heidegger’s academic career. In 1934, he
had resigned the Rectorate at Freiburg and was seemingly distancing himself from the
political machinations of the National Socialist regime. At Todtnauberg he ultimately sought
to immerse himself in a rarefied world that brought into close proximity, thinking and
manual work. However, there are points in the text where this relationship reflects a further
spiritual dimension that suggests the hut was perceived as a monastic retreat for the
philosopher. Heidegger’s persistent over-emphatic identification with a familiar and
immediate community – its woods, its hearth and its dialect that was an attempt to make a
claim for some kind of ‘authenticity’ in relation to his thought. However, there is also a
‘refusal’ at play in this overemphasis on attachment and authenticity which suggests that
within this familial locale there are already hints at elements of uncertainty and anxiety; a
lack of recognition; an ‘otherness’. Disorientation then becomes part of the experience of
place.54 As Claude Magris proposes: “…. without loss and disorientation, without wandering
along paths that peter out in the woods, there is no call, there is no possibility of hearing the
authentic word of Being” (Ibid, 46 my emphasis). Heidegger on one level recognised
Todtnauberg as a stable and familiar locale. However it was also ‘haunted’ by uncertainty
and open to possibilities; to a sense of becoming – a site of appearances and disappearances.
54In The Black Notebooks, Heidegger states that “Today (March 1932) I am in all clarity at a place from which my entire
previous literary output (…) has become alien to me. Alien like a path brought to an impasse, a path overgrown with grass
and vegetation- a path which yet retains the fact that it leads to Da-sein as temporality. A path on whose edges stands
much that is contemporary and mendacious – often in such a way that those path markings are taken as more important
than the path itself” (a f p 102-104, 261).
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In 1922, Heidegger’s wife Elfride commissioned a local carpenter, Pius Schweitzer to

build a cabin on land she had purchased on the hillside above Rütte and close to the village
of Todtnauberg. This building represented not just a thinking place for the philosopher but
also a recreational space for his family and invited guests. The village of Todtnauberg is
situated off the main road between Kirchzarten and Todtnau and is today, arguably more
notable for its waterfall (at 97m, the highest waterfall in Germany) and as a winter ski resort
than it is for the association with Heidegger. This is evident in the small concession to
Heidegger’s presence in the valley at the information centre. It consists of a poorly translated
bi-lingual pamphlet entitled ‘Martin Heidegger in Todtnauberg’ (useful for the printed map
of the rundweg) and a book of photographs by Digne Meller Marcovicz taken at the hut over
the period beginning in late September 1966 until mid-June 1967 (and published in 1985).
The hut and the surrounding landscape were seen as a retreat for the philosopher: and
latterly, escape from his past and his misguided affiliations.
Walking the Rundweg (2010-11)
The hut sits on the on the northern slope of the valley, facing south and overlooking
farmland and the hamlet of Rütte. It is one of several properties situated on this ridge and
remains (to this day) in the possession of the Heidegger family and therefore a private
residence. From below it is partly obscured by a small stand of trees planted on level ground
at its right hand corner and from above by a more substantial copse to the left of the
property.
The rundweg is a concession to the ‘Heidegger pilgrim’ who makes their way on foot
or by car or public transport to this locale in order to attempt to engage Heidegger’s ‘work
world’. Robert Mugurauer asks: “what goes on in Todtnauberg that is so special? He
answers: Perhaps the chance to retrieve and keep lost idioms and to experience that still
robust way of life and speaking? Perhaps an openness to strangers, and a possibility of
insiders coming to accept outsiders as belonging? The giving of region, its locality, dialect,
intertwined natural and communal rhythms: the giving and receiving of the belonging
together- that constitute home and homecoming?” (Mugurauer, 526)
The rundweg allows the visitor a certain ‘access’ to the hut while maintaining some
semblance of privacy (signage specifying the family’s desire to keep the uninvited visitor at
a distance). Importantly, modern transport links have made the hut and rundweg more
accessible than in Heidegger’s lifetime (a regular train from Freiburg takes one to
Kirchzarten where a bus heads into the mountains, dropping one at Todtnauberg’s Rathaus
– a journey of just over an hour). However, historically it was a difficult place to get to from
Heidegger’s permanent home in the Rötebuckweg in the northern suburb of Freiburg-
Zähringen. Heidegger’s wife, Elfrede noted in 1923:
Reaching the cabin at Todtnauberg was an arduous business, particularly in winter.

There were various ways of getting to Todtnauberg: by train to Hinterzarten and
from there on foot or by ski over Rinken, Feldberg and Stübenwasen; by train via
Lörrach up the Wiesen Valley to Totnau and from there on foot up a steep slope; by
train to Kirchzarten and from there by carriage via Oberried and Notschrei…All
these routes were arduous, especially in adverse weather conditions (E. Heidegger,
89).
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My first journey is far less arduous. In spring 2010, I arrived with only a sketchy
contour map found on the internet. I approached the hut from the valley floor, having started
at the tourist information building in Todtnauberg village. The hut appeared almost
unexpectedly above me, partially hidden by trees and looked as if it had been repainted.
However, on closer inspection, it was evident that it had been recently re-shingled and was
as yet, un-weathered. This was a strange moment; a realisation that the hut I had committed
to memory from so many other photographs had changed its appearance.
On my second visit, I followed the formal route of the Heidegger Rundweg (having
picked up a map from the local information centre). It begins on the outskirts of the village
of Todtnauberg at the rear of a youth hostel, heading east, looping down to the hut and then
following a well laid out route around the valley perimeter returning to the start point; a
walk of approximately 6.4 kilometres. The route is generally well signposted and is
punctuated by illustrated information boards providing details about Heidegger life and his
relationship to the hut and the landscape. The first of these information panels is at the start
of the walk and the second is found opposite the Jacobuskreuz along with an inscribed
wooden panel (“Im Denken wird jeglich Ding eisen und Langsam” – “In thinking all things
become solitary and slow” – a quote from Heidegger).55 From here the route takes you along
a car-wide track east along the northern rim of the valley before a small wooden sign
(Wegmarken) directs you to down a narrow footpath to the right into the trees. This short
walk through tree cover leads to a gate into a meadow from which the roof of the hut is now
visible. Crossing the meadow, the hut emerges from the hillside the blue and green of its
shutters and window frames prominent against the starkness of the new shingles. (The hut
is unoccupied and the shutters closed on this and every subsequent visit I have made)
A third information board is positioned to the right of the gate down to the hut. From
here the Wegmarken directs you past the rear of the hut (noting the conspicuous privacy
notice attached to a tree within the fenced- off area surrounding the hut), across the
waterlogged ground around the stream that feeds ‘the well with the star die on top’, and
rising steadily back up to the main path that continues east along the valley edge. It is here
that Paul Celan’s poem ‘Todtnauberg’ is most prominently in my thoughts. Pierre Joris’s
translation of the poem reads:-
Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the

star-die on top,
In the
hütte,
written in the book

– whose name did it record
before mine –?
In this book
the line about
a hope; today,
55 Taken from ‘The Thinker as Poet’ (1947) and published in Poetry Language Thought.
116
for a thinker’s
word
to come,
in the heart,
forest sward, unleveled,

orchis and orchis, singly,
crudeness, later, while driving,

clearly,
he who drives us, the man,

he who also hears it,
the half-
trod log-
trails on the highmoor,
humidity,
much56
In the opening line, Celan identifies two remedial herbs; Arnica and Eyebright and
common to the area. Celan uses these as a metaphor to suggest an anticipation of ‘hope’ from
his meeting with Heidegger for some kind of resolution to the ongoing problem of his own
anxieties about his intellectual relationship with Heidegger. The metaphor of curative herbs
found abundantly in the landscape around the hut, suggests that Celan’s anticipatory ‘hope’
of a ‘cure’ was in some way, already manifest in the topography of Todtnauberg.
The poems palimpsestic57 nature in relation to the site of the hut presents a number
of potential temporal anomalies. As I walk, I am conscious of the rootedness to the soil that
Heidegger advocated as part of a place-based identity centred at Todtnauberg, was not just
a withdrawal into a fantasy of dwelling, proximity and neighbourliness but also a kind of
exclusion. The distinctiveness of this exclusion is that it identifies those who are not directly
linked to a place or location as ‘other’. Neighbourliness ‘speaks’ and in the act of speaking,
excludes those who are unable to engage with the speech patterns and dialect of a location.
Dialects are at once inclusive and exclusive; they are an event of both location and
dislocation. In the poem, Celan refers to the ‘event’ of walking (‘the half-trod log-trails on
the highmoor’). This prompts me to think of writer and walker, Robert MacFarlane, who
identifies the word shul from Tibetan Buddhism as defining “a mark that remains after that
which made it has passed by: footprints are shul, a paths is shul and such impressions draw
one backwards into awareness of past events” (MacFarlane,28).
As I walk east towards the Feldberg, the hut remains out of sight until the path turns
south-east and I look back down the valley. Here it emerges from the edge of a tree line and
is now more or less continually in sight for the rest of the walk. The path snakes east again
and leads to a junction where a second path continues eastward the 3 kilometres to the
56 Found in the collected volume, Lightduress and published by Integer Books in 2005.
57 A palimpsest is a surface on which text has been written, erased and re-inscribed.
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Feldberg. However, the rundweg turns west at by third information board and traverses the
southern rim of the valley back towards Todtnauberg. I am now looking north-west as I track
the hut on the far side of the valley from north-east to north to north-west passing a fourth
information board that is almost directly opposite the hut on the northern rim. The path
continues past a small chapel (the Fatima Kapelle) before looping back into the valley
(heading north-east) and down to the hamlet of Rütte. From here it ascends the north side
of the valley (heading north-west) to a final information panel below the hut before rising to
the starting point at the youth hostel. From here, I descend to Todtnauberg and the bus stop
at the Rathaus.
The hut has been a site of numerous encounters both personal and professional.
Celan’s poem suggests, his appreciation of Heidegger’s mountain life was mediated by his
imaginings of who had visited before. He asks a question in the poem - ‘who’s name did it
record before mine? - hinting at co-signatory’s (arguably with questionable credentials) that
would have previously signed their names in the hut guest book and by doing identified their
presence there. In addition, Celan wrote in the guest book:-
“In the hut-book, looking at the well-star, with a hope for a coming word in the heart.
On 25 July 1967 Paul Celan.”
Celan’s question in the poem (see above) marks the anguish prompted by the thought
of a strange kind of fraternal affiliation with ‘the other’ - previous visitors/inscribers
(academics and others associated with the Nazi Party who visited the hut in the period of
Heidegger’s most conspicuous pro-Nazi activities in the 1930s). This affiliation (an
association made by Celan as a later but still, a co-signatory of the guest book), complicates
the order of forgiveness that seemingly overarches the poem.
It interrupts any clear designation of one who seeks forgiveness (Heidegger) and one
who grants it (Celan) with the complication of Celan’s own perceived ‘guilt’ at being a co-
signatory of the guest book. Importantly the poem is not a literal description of the landscape
where the hut is situated; what we might call, a stenographic notation of the immediate
surroundings. It is fragmentary and elusive; haunted by temporal and spatial anomalies
which, through concealment and effacement, transgress its textural body; a shul. As Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthe states that it: “…is really barely a poem; a single nominal phrase, choppy,
distended and elliptical, unwilling to take shape, it is not the outline but the remainder – the
residue – of an abortive narrative” (Lacoue-Labarthe, 35). The poem implies the notion of a
‘landscape’ that has been actually and symbolically tainted by the fascist past. It also served
as an imperfect setting for events that fractured Celan’s past. Recollections of this past have
to be placed in a terrain that can be described only in abstract fragments…rather than a
coherent whole. Ulrich Baer argues that, “‘Celan presents us not with a coherent experience
but with its remnants, its shards” (Baer, 231, my emphasis).
Here there is a shift from a coherent, topographic spacing to something much more
complex, fragmentary and lacking coherence. Baer proposes that the term ‘landscape’
suggests a symbolic setting for an individual’s passage through time. He defines this in terms
of a continuous and coherent whole. However, another topographic term; ‘terrain’ indicates
a more fragmentary experience onto which a coherent sense of self cannot be projected. The
concept of ‘terrain’ thus suggests a ‘de-coherence’ that exceeds the geographic setting of the
encounter between poet and thinker. It harbours the encrypted unsaid of Heidegger’s
involvements, and subsequent silence about Germany’s fascist regime “…in the words of the
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poem, this painful and finally irreconcilable past lies buried just below the wet forest soil on
which Celan and Heidegger took their walk” (Ibid, 228).
On the walk that Celan made with Heidegger, he hoped to draw Heidegger’s attention
to the “quagmire of the Black Forest”’, where, as Emmanuel Faye suggests, "the Nazis had
set up their camps” (Faye, 306, my emphasis).58 Later, in poem, Celan alluded to this (‘forest
sward, unleveled’ and ‘the half-trod log-trails on the highmoor’)59 In walking with
Heidegger, Celan wanted to indicate that the earth of the Black Forest was not a layer on a
substrate of granite, but was in actuality, fluid and indeterminate (this is further suggested
in the poem by the closing line; ‘humidity, much’). Further, Celan wanted to suggest
Todtnauberg fluid ad indeterminate and most importantly, haunted by the past about which
much still remained unspoken.
The poem is a ‘terrain’ that is indeterminate and interrupts the topographic integrity
of the landscape of Todtnauberg. As Bauer argues, that the romantic ‘topos’ of a particular
place has been invalidated as a means of coherently framing life experiences and home. More
importantly, he suggests that such devices are always and already tainted by the ideological
uses of that tradition to link a specific group or nation to a given geographic location (Bauer,
219). What already haunted Todtnauberg the place, was a past about which so much
remained unspoken – what was ‘ungrounded’, permeable and fractured. The ‘terrain’ of
Heidegger’s Todtnauberg continues to be a place haunted by other temporal events: some
visible and others hidden and elusive.
Walking the Rundweg (2012)
I returned to the Black Forest in April 2012 to revisit the hut. While on previous
occasions, I found myself fortunate with the weather (invariably, bright sunshine and dry),
on this visit, (slightly earlier in the year) the conditions were much more unpredictable.
There was evidently more snow lying and in places along the Rundweg this impacted on the
physical act of walking and I have to take more care. Again (as in all previous visits), the
valley was largely quiet.
I ascended from the village to the youth hostel under grey skies before turning onto
the Rundweg itself at the first information board. As I walked, the amount of winter snow
still lying becomes increasingly evident. Looking north and south, the higher pastures are
still covered by substantial fields of white. As I reached the Jacobuskreuz, I noticed that the
wooden panel with the quote, “Im Denken wird jeglich Ding eisen und Langsam” was
missing. I continued east along a vehicle-wide track scanning the tree line on the right hand
side for the small wooden arrow marked ’Heidegger Rundweg’ and pointing into the trees.
This was also missing, so I made a best guess, selecting what I remembered as the path that
lead down through the trees to the meadow immediately above the rear of the hut. As I
crossed the style that took me from the trees into the meadow, it was noticeable that the
electrified fence that had previously separated the meadow from the hut was missing and
58 Todtnauberg was rumoured to be the site of several Nazi ‘indoctrination’ camps for academics during the 1930s.
59‘Hope’ permeated the beginning of the poem with the remedial possibilities of the surrounding blooms that Celan
identified (Arnica and Eyebright) and also in the image of the well-spring. However a change occurs when the affirmation
of the spring was lost with the later identification in the poem of moisture as dampness – we can interpret this as ‘water
without a clear source’ and as such, an unease or anxiety is articulated. Celan’s term for log as in “half-trod log-paths”
(the means of traversing the damp ground) is Knüppel, which also means bludgeon and has a strong resonance with the
treatment of interned Jews. In the Alain Resnais film Night and Fog, it was noted in the commentary (for which Celan
was responsible, in 1956, for a German translation of Jean Cayrol’s original, in French – see John Felstiner’s text, Paul
Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, 92–3), that camp prisoners were ‘bludgeoned awake’.
119
there was no gate onto the land that immediately surrounds the property. While the signs
requesting respect of privacy remained (although one had now fallen from its original spot
and was propped at the base of a tree), the determining sense of privacy was lost with no
fence or gate. Again, the shutters of the hut were closed and there was little to suggest recent
occupation. I turned north-east and cross the stream leading to the well before re-joining
the wider path which was largely covered in compacted snow. On reaching the fork to the
Feldberg, I noticed that the information board here was also missing. This, with my other
observations of missing signage on the route suggested an ongoing deterioration of the path
marking of the Rundweg.
As I headed west along the south ridge of the valley the weather began to close in.
Light spots of rain turned to persistent drizzle and the hut on the other side of the valley
became indistinct. At the Fatima Kapelle at the far south western edge, the rain was now
nonstop and I decided to abandon the last stage of the walk and head back to Todtnauberg
via a more direct route. This took me past the village graveyard and exploiting a break in the
rain I wandered in and tracked around the space, reading the gravestones, attempting to
build up some kind of historical map of who had lived and died here. I found myself thinking
of Heidegger’s grave at Messkirch; some 120km east of this spot, and then Celan’s at Thiais,
in the southern suburbs of Paris.
Two days later, I made the decision to return and complete the last stage of the walk.
The weather in Freiburg was poor and as I got off the train at Kirchzarten and looking south
over the mountains, the mist descended and it was hard to judge what the conditions would
be like at the hut. The bus ascended in persistent light rain but as we climbed, the
temperature began to drop and the rain turned to sleet and finally to snow. I felt I had no
option, now I was there and decided to embrace the conditions, leaving the village for the
valley and taking a side road that lead me into the valley proper and not the formal start of
the walk. This road led down towards the hamlet of Rütte and would enable me to view the
hut from below at the last information board on the Rundweg. As I walked the snow falling
became thicker and my gloveless hands struggled to operate the two cameras I carried.
This is the first time that I had experienced the hut in such adverse conditions and it
was now that I sensed for the first time, isolation at Todtnauberg that made it so important
to Heidegger. As the snow persisted, and I walked the path beneath the hut taking
photographs, I was reminded of Heidegger’s remark in Why do I Stay in the Provinces?
On a deep winter’s night when a wild, pounding snowstorm rages around the
cabin and veils and covers everything, that is the perfect time for philosophy.
Then its questions must become simple and essential. Working through each
thought can only be tough and rigorous. The struggle to mold (sic) something into
language is like the resistance of the towering firs against the storm (Heidegger
in Sheehan, 27-28).
I remained in the valley for an hour and a half before walking back to the village and
the bus stop. The snow flurries relented a little, but I realised my wait would be longer than
I first thought as I had misread the timetable (weekend rather than weekday). After an hour,
I was finally sitting in a heated coach watching the rising fluctuations of temperature on the
digital readout above the driver’s head as we headed down towards Kirchzarten and the train
back to Freiburg.
120
The ‘above’ of the hut could and would only be interpreted by Heidegger, as ‘a place
of vision’. For him it was a place of insight; presenting him with a panoramic view suggesting
that a physical location might reflect the opportunity for and realisation of, clarity of
thought. Rüdiger Safrinski argues that at ‘...Todtnauberg, on his hill in the Black Forest,
Heidegger felt close to his Greek dream; from there he had descended into the political
lowlands…’ (Safrinski, 278). However, to understand the metaphor of locale of the hut as
more than geographically an ‘above’, we must also address this in relation to a sense of
‘below’ – As Safrinski describes it, a descent into another locale troubled by uncertainty,
disrupted vision and perspectival thought. Arguably, Heidegger’s life was structured in this
twofold way. The clarity of vision associated with Todtnauberg was set against the political
complexities of academic life at the university in Freiburg and arguably by default his town
house in Rötebuckweg in the northern suburb of Freiburg at Zähringen. According to Adam
Sharr, this two story house apparently did not hold any specific importance for Heidegger
in the way that the hut did. At Todtnauberg, Heidegger was happiest as a solitary writer,
single-minded in his concentration on a vision of the future and removed from the
machinations of family and academic life. Even in the aftermath, of war and the collapse of
the Third Reich, Heidegger seemingly refuted the idea that Germany was ‘lost’ and it was
the landscape of hut that sustained this refusal in the post war period until his death in 1976.
As Hugo Ott argues:
Even in 1946, Heidegger may have been imbued with the conviction that the
Germans had not gone under…seeing things as he did in the long term, and placing
his trust in the clarifying light of distant perspectives, like the distant panorama of
the Swiss Alps that was constantly before his eyes at the mountain hut on the
Todtnauberg (Ott, 351).
On the walks I have undertaken on the Heidegger Rundweg, Celan’s poem has
articulated an array of other possible shul; temporal and otherwise, which are traced across
the landscape occupied by Heidegger’s hut. In this, the hut is situated in more complex
‘terrain’. Even today it persists as the site of meditations on its multiple histories and
interpretations. It is at once both worldy and other worldly. Otto Pöggeler suggests that “In
his publications, the philosopher made the hut into a sign of identity with the homeland, a
rootedness in the land that maintains itself even in the present world civilisation” (Pöggeler,
105). Pöggeler further argues that whenever Celan himself speaks of a hut, it is a hut that
belongs to another world “…The poem Hüttenfenster (Hut Windows)…speaks of those who
were persecuted and exterminated, of East European Jewry out of which Celan emerged”
(Pöggeler, 105). Eric Kligerman argues that in Todtnauberg, Celan converted Todtnauberg’s
landscape into the terrain in which Heidegger himself refused to approach: the catastrophic
topos of the extermination camps. Heidgger’s familial ‘home’ was transformed into a
fractured and uncanny post-memorial space (Kligerman, 76). It is here that I continue to
find myself situated – a walker of a fractured and haunted landscape.
121
References
1. Works Cited
2. Baer, Ulrich. 2000. Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of
Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan . Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
3. Celan, Paul. 2005. Lightduress, trans. P. Joris. Los Angeles CA: Green
Integer Books.
4. Faye, Emmanuel. 2009. Heidegger: the Introduction of Nazism into
Philosophy. Yale CT: Yale University Press.
5. Felstiner, John. 2001. Poet Survivor Jew. New Haven CT; Yale
University Press
6. Heidegger, Martin. 2008. Letters to His Wife (selected and edited by
Gertrude Heidegger). R.D.V. Glasgow, ed. Cambridge UK: Polity Press.
7. Heidegger, Martin.1975. Poetry Language Thought, trans. A.
Hofstadter. New York NY: Harper Perennial
8. Heidegger, Martin 2016. Ponderings II-VI, Black Notebooks 1931 -1938.
Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington IN: Indiana University
Press
9. Kligerman, Eric. 2007. Sites of the Uncanny: Paul Celan, Specularity
and the Visual Arts . New York, NY and Berlin: De Gruyter.
10. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. 1998. Poetry as Experience, trans. Andrea
Tarnowski. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
11. Macfarlane, Robert. 2012. Old Ways: a Journey on Foot . London UK:
Hamish Hamilton.
12. Magris, Claudio.2001. Danube. London, UK: Harvill Press.
13. Maier-Katkin, Daniel. 2010. Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt,
Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness . New York: Norton
Press.
14. Mugerauer, Robert. 2008. Heidegger and Homecoming: the Leitmotif
in the Later Writings. Toronto Canada: University of Tor onto Press.
15. Ott, Hugo.1994. Martin Heidegger: a Political Life, trans. A. Blunden.
London UK: Fontana.
16. Pöggeler, Otto.1997. The Paths of Heidegger’s Life and Thought, trans.
J. Bailiff. New Jersey NY: Humanities Press International.
17. Safrinski, R. 1999. Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. E.
Osers. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
18. Sharr, Adam. 2006. Heidegger’s Hut. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
19. Sheehan, Thomas, ed. 2010. Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker. New
Brunswick NJ: Transaction.
20. Tilley, Christopher.1997. A Phenomenology of Landscape . Oxford UK:
Berg.
122
HIGHS AND LOWS MAKE YOU FEEL THAT THINGS MATTER – ORIENTATIONAL
AND ONTOLOGICAL METAPHORS IN JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S EXTREMELY
LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Wioletta Chabko
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was written by an American writer Jonathan Safran
Foer and published for the first time by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2005. The novel
constitutes one of the most popular examples of the genre which has recently been termed
by critics as multimodal literature. Alison Gibbons provides a succinct but comprehensive
definition of this literary trend:
Considering multimodal literature from a holistic perspective, some of the formal

features these works tend to contain are: varied typography, unusual textual layouts
and page design including the concrete arrangement of text for visual purposes, the
inclusion of images (illustrative, diagrammatic, photographic) and facsimiles of
documents; multimodal literature may play with the size, shape, and design of the
codex, using cut-outs/die cuts or pop-ups, and offering the reader throw-outs or flip
book sections; multimodal literature, perhaps partly because of the striking impact
of its visuality for readers, often pushes at its own ontological boundaries, whether
in the form of metafictive writing, footnotes and self-interrogative critical voices, or
through ontological masquerade in itself. (2012: 420)
Foer’s novel can be categorised as a piece of multimodal literature since it includes a

few of the features which Gibbons identified as characteristic of the genre, namely: varied
typography, the concrete arrangement of text for visual purposes, the inclusion of images
(which consist in illustrations and photographs), and a flip book section as the last fifteen
pages of the book. Given the novelty of the genre as a literary phenomenon, it seems
advisable to point out at this juncture that the uniqueness of the inclusion of the images in
the works of this sort differs from the traditional literary examples where the similar
technique is implemented, e.g., children’s books. The difference lies in the fact that the
images included in a multimodal novel are embedded in the story rather than existing
outside the fictional realm as it is the case of children’s books. In other words, in multimodal
works the images leave the reader under the impression that what he or she sees in the book
is exactly what the character(s) sees in the story or what he or she produces in it, or, as
Wolfgang Hallet puts it, they are “part of the narrative world, produced by the narrator and
directly woven into the narrative discourse by the device of drawing upon them continuously
in ekphrastic passages” (2009: 133). This strategy can be seen in Foer’s novel when, for
instance, the protagonist’s father circles something in the New York Times and the reader
learns what has been marked in the paper because the picture of the newspaper’s page is
inserted in-between the text on the page. Thus, rather than having it only ekphrastically
described, what the reader gets is an actual glimpse of a fictional item as the characters must
see it. A few more instances from the novel provide the reader with the same sort of
experience. For example, the pictures which Oskar includes in his scrapbook are actually
123
Part 2 Wioletta Chabko Highs and Lows…
reproductions of the print outs of the photographs the boy finds on the Internet. Or, the boy
grandfather’s peculiar way of communicating with people is also presented in an immediate
manner: the man uses multiple notebooks to write a number of short phrases with which he
expresses himself and communicates with others and the reader is actually flipping through
the pages of the man’s jotter.
The multimodal elements described above stand for a close representation of the
world as we experience it on a daily basis; in the real world we encounter objects like images
and notebooks in the form as they are rendered in the book. In other words, what those
elements call for is, in Mark Johnsons’ terms of reference, embodied intelligence:
We human beings have bodies. We are “rational animals,” but we are also “rational
animals,” which means that our rationality is embodied. The centrality of human
embodiment directly influences what and how things can be meaningful for us, the
ways in which these meanings can be developed and articulated, the ways we are
able to comprehend and reason about our experience, and the actions we take. Our
reality is shaped by the patterns of our bodily movement, the contours of our spatial
and temporal orientation, and the forms of our interaction with objects. It is never
merely a matter of abstract conceptualizations and propositional judgments. (1987:
xix)
Thus, because Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close features all the mentioned
multimodal elements, the novel becomes to us an object with which we can physically
interact rather than just an illusory fictional world into which we enter. In this way, then, it
calls for the embodied rather than purely abstract (language-mediated only) engagement
with it. Based on the types of multimodal elements included in the novel, the reader’s
sensory interaction with the multimodal content of the book can be divided into two kinds:
visual (a picture from the newspaper) and tactile (the scrapbook sections, the grandfather’s
notebooks, the flip book section). This activity of physically engaging with the content since
it imitates objects which the reader encounters in his or her life, renders the experience of
reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close more sensorily rich and, as will be explained
later, more salient, than reading a traditional novel, where the text is organized in a block
fashion, with no illustrations and no tactile elements whatsoever.
Theoretical Framework
The logic behind the above stated idea that whenever something taps into our physical
experience of reality it becomes more meaningful to us rather than when it is solely a matter
of abstract reasoning or propositional judgments, is based on multiple studies on the subject
of sense-based meaning formation. The effects of these researches conducted by, among
others, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Johnson 1987, Tsur 1992, Shen and Cohen 1998, Shen
2002; 2008, led to the creation of a taxonomy in which the highest, i.e., the most abstract
modality or the physical faculty with the means of which humans create signification, is that
of sight. This modality is, in turn, followed by lower modalities of “sound, smell, taste, and,
finally, touch” (Shen 2008: 302) which enable for a more concrete acquaintance with the
object of cognition and, as such, allow for a more immediate and salient meaning-making
process. This hierarchical order is illustrated by Shen in the following manner:
124
Lower sensory modalities tend to include more experienced-based sensations (i.e.,

those sensed as a physiological sensations of the experiencer as feeling cold or
feeling the roughness of a certain texture), while higher-ones tend to represent
object-based sensations (attributed to the object being perceived); hence the former
are being sensed as more immediate than the latter in the way that they involve a
direct bodily experience of a perceiver. Furthermore, the lower sensory modalities
(touch and taste) involve a direct contact between the sensory modality and the
object of perception, while the higher ones (hearing and vision) do not require such
a direct contact. (2008: 302)
This sense-centered theory of human cognition finds reflection in the way the English
language works, i.e., there is a noticeable tendency to utilise lower modalities to cognitively
grasp those higher ones. For instance, when one talks about the act of seeing, he or she uses
terminology linked with the sense of touch, or as Johnson has it: “vision is physical
touching/ manipulation, e.g., behold, catch sight of” (1987: 108). Apart from these two quite
obvious illustrations of the discussed theory, there are also other vision-related verbs which,
although they do not initially seem to be connected with the haptic sense, stem from Latin
words denoting physical actions: “perceive (Lat. -cipio “seize”); scrutinize (Lat. scrutari
“pick through trash”); examine (Lat. ex + agmen- “pull out from a row”); discern (Lat. dis-
cerno “separate”); see (* sekw-, which also gives Lat. sequor “follow”)” (1987: 108). What
these, as well as plenty others examples of the same nature60, testify to, is that the physical
aspect of human experience has a great bearing on the way people comprehend the world
inside (mental realm) as well as outside ( material environment) themselves. In Lakoff
and Johnson words:
While our emotional experience is as basic as our spatial and perceptual experience,
our emotional experiences are much less clearly delineated in terms of what we do
with our bodies. Although a sharply delineated conceptual structure emerges from
our perceptual-motor functioning, no sharply defined conceptual structure for
emotions emerges from our emotional functioning alone. (1980: 58)
As such, “we typically conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of physical—that is, we

conceptualize the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly delineated” (1980: 59).
In what follows, I will illustrate that Foer’s novel engages our embodied intelligence
in order to communicate its message not only by introducing the visual and tactile elements
but also by communicating the central themes of the plot by means of linguistic expressions
that are strongly rooted in the experiential nature of human cognition. The textual examples
which are going to constitute the illustrations of this strategy fall into two broad categories,
namely orientational and ontological metaphors. The concepts were coined by Lakoff and
Johnson who define them in the following terms: orientational metaphors are the
expressions which have to do with our sense of spatial orientation, such directional
oppositions as e.g., “up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral”
(1980: 14). For instance, such common phrases in the English language as “I’m feeling up,”
60 Throughout their book Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson provide a plethora of examples supporting the idea
of the directionality of the described cognitive mapping (from the more concrete towards the more abstract), i.e., theories
as buildings, love as a journey, understanding as seeing. For more examples, see chapter 6 “Ontological Metaphors.”
125
or “That boosted my spirits,” vs. “I’m feeling down,” “My spirit sank” (1980: 15) are the
examples of the very fact that our bodies provide us with the basis upon which more abstract
reasoning can be built. Such metaphorical expressions (although they may not seem to us
metaphorical at all since they have become heavily conventionalised) are understandable to
us since, as Lakoff and Johnson speculate, and they do so rather convincingly in my view,
they have basis in a universal kind of physical experience, i.e., erect posture is associated
with physical fitness and, consequently, with emotional well-being, whereas drooping
posture rather universally indicates illness or an old age, and, as such, it is associated with
emotionally negative or sad states of mind. Consequently, the spatial oppositions up and
down acquire more abstract meanings, i.e., up becomes something positive whereas down
becomes something negative (this is why “I’m feeling up” stands for feeling good and “I’m
feeling down” means one feels sad. This metaphorical structure is actually very pervasive
in the English language. It extends to such categories as
• consciousness and unconsciousness (“Wake up”; “He fell asleep” (1980: 15)),
• health and sickness (“He’s at the peak of health”; “He came down with the flu”
(1980: 15)),
• to be in control and to be subject to control (“I am on top of the situation”; His
power is on the decline” (1980: 15)) or
• rationality and irrationality (“The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I
raised it back up to the rational plane” (1980: 17))61.
The latter category mentioned, ontological metaphor, is a kind of metaphor which
illustrates that people tend to understand their various experiences in terms of entities,
objects and substances. This is so because, as Lakoff and Johnson write: “We are physical
beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and we
experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a container, with a bounding
surface and an in-out orientation.” (1980: 29). In other words, we perceive the world’s
phenomena, necessarily, from the human point of view, i.e., from the point of view of a
bounded entity. Thus, even if things which we conceptualise as entities and substances are
not bounded or clearly discrete (such as certain physical phenomena, e.g., mountain ranges
but also abstract notions, such as feelings), we will still impose artificial boundaries on them
so that they can satisfy the purposes of why we conceive of them as bounded entities or
objects. These purposes include being able to “refer to them, categorize them, group them,
and quantify them—and, by this means, reason about them.” (1980: 25). Once again, Lakoff
and Johnson provide a number of linguistic examples of the trend, e.g., for the purpose of
referring: “We are working toward peace” (1980: 26) or to quantify: “There is so much
hatred in the world” (1980: 26). Thanks to the intuitive appeal of ontological metaphor it is
also perfectly understandable to say: “I’m a little rusty today” (1980: 27) as the mind is often
construed as a machine. Moreover, the activity can be perceived as a container for certain
type of action: “Outside of washing the windows, what else did you do?” (1980: 30). And
finally, emotional states can be seen as containers: “He’s in love” (1980: 32).
61Lakoff and Johnson provide a more extensive list illustrating the pervasiveness of the metaphorical structure discussed.
For more examples, see chapter 4 “Orientational Metaphors.”
126
Analysis
Having dealt with the necessary terminological ground-clearing, it becomes possible

to discuss the textual examples themselves in order to illustrate how they exemplify the
patterns described in the above theoretical paragraphs. Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close’s prevailing theme are the consequences of 9/11 terrorist attacks for a nine-year-old
Oskar Schell. The boy loses his father in the tragedy and the narrative recounts his story of
a few years after when Oskar finds a key in an envelope in his father’s office and embarks on
a journey to find out which lock in the entire New York City the key can open. His search
becomes the central theme of the novel, although Oskar’s story is interwoven with the tales
of the two other members of Schell family, i.e., his grandmother and his grandfather. Oskar’s
narrative is, as one can imagine, filled with emotions of sadness, depression and disillusion.
His story is a first-person account of his life and, as such, the language bears the
characteristic of infantilism, but thanks to it, it is also, and quite importantly in the context
of the present study, imaginative and inventive. One of the prevailing expressions which the
reader encounters in the novel and which will constitute the first illustration supporting the
hypothesis that the language used in the book is oriented towards experiential gestalts, can
be categorized as a mix of orientational and ontological metaphors. The phrasing also
articulates one of the major thematic concerns of the novel, i.e., suffering. The core of the
expression comprises of two words: heavy boots. The phrase appears in the book in a
number of variations, e.g.,
• “Even after everything I’m still wearing heavy boots” (2006: 2), “it seemed to
me you should wear heavy boots when your dad dies” (2006: 200), “the homeless
person who I sometimes see (…) puts me in heavy boots” (2006: 35),
• “I got incredibly heavy boots” (2006: 86, 242), “it gave her incredibly heavy
boots” (2006: 101), “it gave me heavy, heavy boots (2006: 159), “I was afraid the
answer would give me heavy boots” (2006: 197),
• my boots were too heavy to go to school” (2006: 142), “my boots were so heavy
that I was glad there was a column underneath us” (2006: 168), “my boots were the
heaviest they’d ever been in my life” (2006: 234), “I would feel like: heavy boots”
(2006: 240).
Some longer passages can also be found where the expression is visibly used to convey the
protagonist’s suffering:
• “I told Gerald, ‘I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once,’ because I
wanted him to crack up, because if I could make him crack up, my boots could be a
little lighter’” (2006: 5), or:
• “A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know
why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter” (2006: 11) and
finally: “I couldn’t sleep, not after hours, and it made my boots lighter to be around
his things” (2006: 36).
First of all, it is interesting to notice that although the metaphor heavy boots and
its variations do not conventionally exist in the English language, its meaning is still
perfectly understandable to the English speakers. There are at least three reasons why this
is the case. First, it is obviously a particular context in which the expression appears that
enables the reader to grasp its meaning. Secondly, it sounds familiar to and its meaning
127
coincides with a very common metaphor in the English language, namely heavy heart.
Last, but perhaps most important reason why the phrase can be easily understood is because
the metaphor is coherent with orientational metaphor based on up-down opposition where
up is associated with something positive, whereas down is seen as something negative, or,
as Lakoff and Johnson have it “Happy is up; Sad is down” (1980: 15). Heavy boots can be
correlated with the notion happy is up; sad is down since the modifier heavy in it implies
a downward movement. When complete with the word that it precedes, i.e., boots, the
meaning of heavy becomes even more meaningful (i.e., more aligned with the metaphorical
structure happy is up; sad is down) in the sense that now the heavy may cause a human
being (somebody who wears boots) to sink down, or may evoke a feeling of being drawn
down. Heavy in this case substitutes down in happy is up; sad is down structure.
However, the choice of shoes as a metonymic element constituting a metaphorical
expression of sadness needs a further examination in order to see how it aligns with the logic
of happy is up; sad is down structure. First of all, it needs to be said that the choice of a
material object (a pair of boots) for a metonymic element signifying one’s sadness aligns
with the logic of ontological metaphors, where abstract notions are construed in terms of
physical phenomena. In contrast to the previously mentioned metaphor heavy heart,
where the emotional state is expressed with the use of a physical object that is associated
with feelings (at least in Western culture), the phrase from Foer’s novel tries to convey the
emotion of sadness with the use of an item which seem to have nothing in common with
human emotionality, namely boots. However, this choice can be justified with the recourse
to happy is up; sad is down structure. Shoes are one of the elements of one’s clothing
that may make a person feel considerably heavier and boots, in particular, are arguably the
heaviest footwear that one can wear. Thus, boots are a perfect choice for an object that may
signify sadness since they can weigh a person down, and as such, the selection of this
particular footwear is coherent with happy is up; sad is down structure. More to the
point, shoes are also the lowest element of one’s clothing (therefore connoting with down)
which makes them even more aligned with the metaphorical structure in question. Thus,
although it may not be instantaneously recognisable that the boots are actually a well
selected item for the purposes of signifying human emotionality, they become so when
recourse is made to the notion of happy is up; sad is down . To recapitulate, heavy
boots phrase makes sense to the readers of Foer’s novel because the expression is coherent
with orientational metaphor happy is up; sad is down which is, as has been discussed
before, a very pervasive structure in the English language. In fact, as Lakoff and Johnson
suggest, although most of our concepts are metaphorically structured (i.e., they are usually
understand in terms of other concepts), the opposition up vs. down provides probably one
of the most important points of reference with the respect to which we can grasp various,
more advanced (abstract) linguistic concepts:
Almost every movement we make involves a motor program that either changes our
up-down orientation, maintains it, presupposes it, or takes it into account in some
way. Our constant physical activity in the world, even when we sleep, makes an up-
down orientation not merely relevant to our physical activity but centrally relevant.
(…) Since there are systematic correlates between our emotions (like happiness) and
our sensory-motor experiences (like erect posture), these form the basis of
orientational metaphorical concepts (such as HAPPY IS UP). Such metaphors allow
128
us to conceptualize our emotions in more sharply defined terms and also to relate
them to other concepts having to do with general well-being (e.g., HEALTH, LIFE,
CONTROL, etc.). (1980: 56-58)
Another interesting and recurring pattern of expressions in the text which
communicates meaning with the use of experientially oriented language can be subsumed
under the category of ontological metaphor. Take, for instance, the fragment of the text in
which Oskar conducts an emotional conversation with his mother. In it, the protagonist
accuses the woman of not being properly sad because of what happened to his father and
her late husband:
She said, “I cry a lot, too, you know.” “I don’t see you cry a lot.” “Maybe that’s because
I don’t want you to see me cry a lot.” “Why not?” “Because that isn’t fair to either of
us.” “Yes it is.” “I want you to move on.” “How much do you cry?” “How much?” “A
spoonful? A cup? A bathtub? If you added it up.” “It doesn’t work like that.” “Like
what?” (2006: 171)
In this short passage, we clearly see the boy’s attempt to understand the dimensions
of his mother’s feelings. In order to be able to do so, he turns to a physical activity of
measuring material substances only to be stopped by his mother who explains to him that
such a literal translation is not possible. However, Oskar’s words are not entirely lacking
sense. When the protagonist talks about his emotions of sadness he construes them as
physical substance and, as such, he follows the pattern which all English speakers follow
when they talk about their emotional states. This tendency is visible in such common
expressions as: I have lots of regrets about my past actions. He needs a lot of love. There
is so much hostility in you today. Miss you a bunch. Aren’t you a little sullen? You
worry too much these days. He shows little pity in dealing with his enemies. All these
phrasings are actually metaphorically structured but due to the process of linguistic
conventionalisation they are no longer recognized as such. However, a closer look at these
expressions reveals their metaphorical nature, i.e., abstract notions such as regret, love,
hostility, yearning and so on, are all understood by the means of correlating them with a
physical act of measuring. They are quantified as if they were various substances or some
other type of material elements. This, once again, illustrates that our abstract reasoning is
based on our experiences in the physical reality, or, more precisely, it shows that our reality
is shaped by, as Johnson has it, “the forms of our interaction with objects” (1987: xix). In
other words, the meaning of those expressions stems from our lower sensory modality (in
accordance with the theory of cognitive mapping mentioned before, i.e., the meaning
stemming from the lower sensory modalities enables us to grasp the phenomena arising
from the faculties associated with those of higher order), more precisely the sense of touch.
This is perhaps not all together surprising and quite simple to explain; surely, in order to
arrive at the developed abstract measuring systems which, we use nowadays, we first must
have become familiar with the sizes and shapes of different objects or their weights by
touching them, and by holding them in our hands, respectively. It seems like quantifying
abstract feelings is based on the same process of metaphorical translation.
Few other examples of the similar nature which can be found in Foer’s novel point to
the notion of the physical reality and, more specifically, a sense of an in-out orientation, as
a foundation for understanding more advanced (more abstract) notions. The following
129
passage exemplifies the logic according to which emotions are substances and humans
are containers which those can fill up:
“What do you think is going on?” “I feel too much. That’s what’s going on.” “Do you
think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?” “My insides don’t
match up with my outsides .” “Do anyone’s inside and outsides match up?” “I
don’t know. I’m only me.” “Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the
difference between the inside and outside.” (2006: 201, emphasis added)
The comprehension of the emphasised sentence from the extract calls for the reader’s
unconscious agreement with the idea that human beings are indeed (like) containers with “a
bounding surface and an in-out orientation” (Johnson 1980: 29) ready to be filled up with
various substances/ elements. To put the same point another way, this metaphorical
structure is understood by the reader since it is coherent with the logic of the pervasive
ontological metaphor. Few other examples from the novel follow the same sort of ontological
reasoning, i.e., construing emotions as substances and humans as containers with an inside
and outside demarcation:
I sat there while he made all the kids crack up. Even Mrs. Rigley cracked up, and so
did her husband, who played the piano during the set changes. I didn’t mention that
she was my grandma, and I didn’t tell him to stop. Outside, I was cracking up too.
Inside, I was wishing that she were tucked away in a portable pocket, or that she’d
also had an invisibility suit. (2006: 144, emphasis added)
I wanted to tell her she shouldn't be playing Scrabble yet. Or looking in the mirror.
Or turning the stereo any louder than what you needed just to hear it. It wasn’t fair
to Dad, and it wasn’t fair to me. But I buried it all inside me. (2006: 35, emphasis
added)
“I’m gonna bury my feelings deep inside me.” “What do you mean, bury your
feelings?” “No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m
gonna cry on the inside.” (2006: 203, emphasis added)
What all these metaphorical expressions have in common is that they all utilise a very
basic kind of spatial orientation, i.e., in-out orientation as a building block for articulation
of the concepts that “we do not have a direct or a well-defined way of conceptualizing” (1980:
148)62. This is why in a variety of linguistic instances which can be categorized as emanation
of ontological metaphor, the recourse to the physical reality is taken in order to express
abstract, psychological notions. Thus, it appears that the employment of such linguistic
technique in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which relies on describing psychological
states of the protagonist with the use of very basic metaphorical structure of people as
containers and emotions as substances is a well-chosen trick to communicate the text’s
message(s) easily as well as effectively.
62Lakoff and Johnson do not use the formulation in the reference to the metaphorical structure discussed here, i.e., people
are containers; emotions are substances, however, they use it to explain the tendency based on the same sort of cognitive
mapping (from basic (physical) concepts towards those abstract ones) when they explain how in the English language ideas
are construed as food, e.g., He was all the time h u n g r y for new ideas.
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Conclusion
With the view of the presented examples it can be said that the language used in the
novel to communicate its crucial thematic concerns (suffering, dealing with one’s loss,
controlling one’s emotions) is essentially based on our experiential reality, and, more
precisely, on such contours of our spatial orientation as up-down and in-out oppositions,
as well as the more general tendency to construe of our experiences in terms of physical
phenomena, e.g., emotions as entities or substances. Taking into account the study on the
topic of the physical grounding of our conceptual system conducted by Lakoff and Johnson,
there are good reasons to believe that by using language structures which refer us to our
sense of spatial orientation, as well as various aspects of our interaction with the physical
environment, the readers of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are able to understand
the novel’s main themes in a more meaningful fashion since, to quote the two scholars again:
“[m]ost of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization
metaphor.”63
It is hoped that this essay has illustrated how Foer’s novel multimodality is indeed
two-fold; the book is a multimodal artefact due to the employment of graphic, typographical
as well as tactile elements but it is also a multimodal novel on the linguistic level as it calls
for the embodied intelligence of the reader. Its linguistic meaning-making strategies rely on
the very fundamental fact that we have bodies of the kind that we have and that the
experiences we have because of and thanks to them while we function and interact with our
physical environment are most basic, and, as such, most meaningful to us. In effect, the
presented textual examples advocate not only the above stated claim, but they also serve to
support the hypothesis according to which the notion of space is one of the most
fundamental notions with which we can rationalise and talk about our experience.
References
1. Gibbons, A., 2012, “Multimodal Literature and Experimentation”, The Routledge

Companion to Experimental Literature, eds. J. Bray, A. Gibbons, and B. McHale,
Oxon: Routledge, 420-434.
2. Hallet, W., 2009, “The Multimodal Novel: The Integration of Modes and Media in
3. Novelistic Narration”, Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative
Research, eds. S. Heinen and R. Sommer, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 129-53.
4. Johnson, M., 1987, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning,
Imagination, and
5. Reason, London: The University of Chicago.
6. Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson, 1980, Metaphors We Live By, London: The University of
7. Chicago.
63Lakoff and Johnson give plenty of examples to support this hypothesis, e.g., construing love in terms of a journey (e.g.,
This is the point at which we need to g o o u r s e p a r a t e w a y s ), time as space (e.g., We are a p p r oa c h i n g the end of
2016), words as containers (e.g., The meaning is i n the sentence). For more examples, see chapter 10 “Some Further
Examples.”
131
8. Safran Foer, J., 2006, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, London: Penguin
Books.
9. Shen, Y., 2002, “Cognitive Constraints on Verbal Creativity”, Cognitive Stylistics:
Language and Cognition in Text Analysis, eds. E. Semino and J. Culpeper,
Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 221-230.
10. Shen, Y., 2008, “Metaphor and Poetic Figures”, The Cambridge Handbook of
Metaphor
11. and Thought, ed. R. W. Gibbs, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 295-307.
12. Shen, Y., and M. Cohen, 1998, “How Come Silence Is Sweet But Sweetness Is Not
Silent: A
13. Cognitive Account of Directionality in Poetic Synaesthesia”, Language and Literature
7(2): 123–140.
14. Tsur, R., 1992, Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics, Amsterdam: North Holland.
132
TEMPORAL DYNAMICS AND SPATIAL HORIZONS IN
ALEJANDRO MORALES’ NOVEL THE RAG DOLL PLAGUES (1992)
Sophia Emmanouilidou
In the Borderlands
you are the battleground
where the enemies are kin to each other;
you are at home, a stranger,
the border disputes have been settled
the volley of shots have shattered the truce
you are wounded, lost in action
dead, fighting back; […] (Anzaldúa 1987: 195)
In the seminal text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), Gloria
Anzaldúa confers some of the self-identity quandaries that arise in the interstices between
antipodal expressions of consciousness. The borderlands signify a mystifying locale, which
ostensibly demarcates two national territories, and it does so quite violently at times. As
Anzaldúa highlights, it is “the battleground/where the enemies are kin to each other,” an
acute comment that implies an ongoing and also intimate antagonism between two distinct
cultures (ibid. 195). But apart from national delimitations, the frontier zone between Mexico
and the U.S.A. becomes a figurative space, one that facilitates the process(es) of cultural
transfusion. In this light, the border zone creates the possibilities for the binary flow of
cultural information, and spawns “interdefining” and “interacting” contexts of being in the
world (King 1990: 86). Anzaldúa deciphers borderlands awareness “as a constantly shifting
process or activity of breaking down binary dualism and creating the third space, the in-
between, border, or interstice that allows contradictions to co-exist in the production of the
new element (mestizaje or hybridity)” (ibid. 86). This paper looks into conceptions of time
(past, present and future) as conducive to colonial and postcolonial frames of spatiality. The
borderlands metaphor informs much of this paper’s theoretical background, since the
concept aptly explains “processes of many things, psychological, physical, and mental. [It is
a] metaphor that does not apply specifically to one thing, but can be applied to many things”
(Anzaldúa, Keating 2000:176). Along these lines, the exploration of temporal dimensions
and the creation of spatial horizons are interrelated processes of thought that transcend
specific eras and marked boundaries, and become Alejandro Morales’ thematic mainstay in
his novel The Rag Doll Plagues (1992).64 Finally, the text is discussed as a sincere revelation
of the inhumane superimpositions that imperialist, dominant and elitist forces exercise onto
the less fortunate masses of the world throughout humanity’s history.
In “Approaches to a Hemispheric America in The Rag Doll Plagues: An Interview
with Chicano Author Alejandro Morales” (2006), the borderlands is approached as a
64Alejandro Morales is Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is also an
acclaimed novelist and the recipient of the 2007 Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
133
Part 2 Sophia Emmanouilidou Temporal Dynamics…
paradigmatic case study for the constant antinomies occurring between nations, cultures
and mentalities. The article presents Morales’ interview with Maja Neff, and aptly illustrates
some of the writer’s socio-political concerns and literary visions. The distinguished Chicano
author tentatively responds to Neff’s question on the concept of transnationalism, or the
creation of a free zone between Mexico and the U.S.A. 65 Although Neff infers that the
transnational perspective informs much of the flow of The Rag Doll Plagues, Morales evades
a straightforward answer, and instead chooses to emphasize the numerous possibilities that
arise when one negotiates his/her self-identity in space and time. Furthermore, Morales
defines literature as a democratic means to carving the future, claims that Latina/o writers
fruitfully experiment with the sense of historical time that lies ahead of us, and visualizes a
world of literature that can astound the reader. In Morales’ own words, “novelists are writing
about [the] negotiation of identity, negotiation of culture, space and so forth, are writing
about the future” (Neff 2006: 174). Morales implies that a spatio-temporal dialectic
underlies most of Latino art forms, especially those that undertake the topic of
interculturalism.66 For the acclaimed Chicano author, Latino artists are alert interpreters of
experience, and even though “events are occurring very fast […] novelists, poets, artists seem
to be those who write about or paint, who compose music about these things” (ibid. 174).
For Morales, the various expressions of art do indeed chart new territories of nuance by
exploring “the political truths [artists] sometimes stumble on” (ibid. 174).
Morales’ novel The Rag Doll Plagues consists of three distinct narratives: Books I, II
and III. Set in the borderlands zone between Mexico and the U.S.A., the common, spatial
denominator of the three tales initially juxtaposes with the compelling loops into historicity
that writer ventures. The novel takes on a temporal rite of three centuries, and each section
(re)creates the interrelated contexts of imperialism, postcolonialism and environmental
destruction. In a way, the three distinct, thematic concerns of each section materialize
Morales’ apprehension of the borderlands hermeneutics as a political narrative of
exploitation, but do so in a consistently charted landscape. Border spaces are explained as
socio-political locales, markedly defined by turbulent and riotous human enactment
throughout time. Put differently, in The Rag Doll Plagues the cursory fixation with the
geographical space between Mexico and the U.S.A. mutates into a transcendental
understanding of brutality and bondage. And in effect, the history of the locale offers a
paradigmatic case study for the entanglements and perils of supremacist policies across
temporal and spatial matrixes, and propounds the study of mexicano and Mexican American
self-identities as an exemplar core in the direction of comprehending and combating
exploitation.
Morales ingeniously tackles frontiers and border crossings as concrete proof of a
diachronic demarcation of societies, but also as the advent of a ruthless exercise of power.
Morales construes self-formation as the outcome of a perennial enmity between antipodal
collectivities: invading forces and the occupied, mainstream and marginalized groupings,
65The term ‘transnationalism’ relates to shared historical experiences of communalities, regardless of the geographical
distance between them In Imagined Transnationalism (2009), these “connectivities […] flow […] within the Western
Hemisphere and at times reaching to Europe and Asia. According to such a focus, cultures organize themselves not around
delimitation, the shoring up of unique, indistinguishable features (however ‘hybrid’ they may be); rather, they are centrally
about people being ‘in touch,’ about negotiation and dialogue” (Concannon, Lomelí, Priewe 2009: 5). For more on
the transnational connections between varied socio-cultural identities spread across the globe, see Concannon, Lomelí,
Priewe (2009).
66 For an extensive approach to the notion of interculturalism in autobiographical writings, see Fischer (1986).
134
the lofty and the grassroots. The Rag Doll Plagues explores the socio-political, cultural and
environmental tensions in the borderlands since the suppression of the Native Americans
by the conquistadores, and introduces the reader into a labyrinthine exploration of the
clashes between European, indio, Anglo and Mexican American self-identities. Morales reels
out a “rhetoric [of] salvation [that] continues to be implemented on the assumption of the
inferiority or devilish intentions of the other and, therefore, continues to justify oppression
and exploitation as well as the eradication of the difference” (Mignolo, Tlostanova 2006:
206). Furthermore, the depiction of overwhelming human wretchedness in all three sections
of the novel facilitates Morales’ disproval of compartmentalized, historical explanations of
space. Put differently, all three sections of The Rag Doll Plagues accentuate the ordeals of
subjugation and disenfranchisement, thus creating a spiral-like temporal elucidation of
victimization and hardship.
‘Book I: Mexico City’ draws the reader’s attention to 18th century New Spain. Morales
recreates the New World as a distraught landscape of calamity and catastrophe, sketched
out in the gory vista of “a diseased, infested population: the prostitutes, the lepers, the
abandoned children, the demented homeless people, the disenfranchised who survived in
the filthy streets, the dungheaps and the garbage dumps in the city” (29). The outbreak of
an aggressive plague weakens the conquistadores, depopulates the Spanish colonias, and
wreaks havoc in the heart of imperialist Spain’s relocation into the Americas. La Mona is the
name that people have given to the disease because of the rapid deterioration it inflicts on
the body, leaving “a corpse that feels like a rag doll […] as in a natural death, but remains
soft like a wineskin” (30). The malady advances so incredibly fast into the neural and
musculoskeletal systems of those who contract the disease that the New World appears as
an accursed, infernal site.
The first section of The Rag Doll Plagues unravels the organic and physical hazards
caused by invasive policies. The narrator is a knowledgeable physician, “First Professor of
Medicine, Anatomy and Surgery in His Majesty’s Empire, […] First Physician and Surgeon
of the Royal Bedchamber and […] the Director of the Royal Protomedicato” (15). Dr.
Gregorio Revueltas is sent to Mexico City to find a cure for the pandemic (La Mona) that
decimates the Spanish colony. The setting in the Americas is described as an eerie locale of
powerful conquerors that bring about the related predicaments of physical pain and
emotional estrangement to the natives. Dr. Gregorio Revueltas’ inner monologues reveal the
horrors he witnesses in Mexico City: “I listened to the constant cries of thousands of
mourners. I saw the torches marking the piles of dead. The unbearable smell choked me.
Why had I come [to the New World]? I was helpless against all this. […] God was there no
beauty here? No peace, no joy? No love in New Spain? (43)” Moreover, he soon comprehends
the atrocities imperialist Spain commits against the indios, and wonders “[w]hat could
surpass the decadence and death that [he] had seen thus far on [his] voyage to the heart of
the New World?” (19) The narrator decodes imperialist practices as amoral and brutal
attacks against human decency, and asks himself “Oh God, what were you about to test me
with now? (19)”
Verifying Dr. Gregorio Revueltas’ innermost fears, the plague escapes the bordered
sector that contains the indigenous peoples, and soon transmutes into an ominous and lethal
hazard for the whole of New Spain. Yet, despite the fact that La Mona is a threat to both
indios and conquistadores, one that strikingly acquires epic dimensions for the New World,
the Spanish rulers persecute curanderas/os (healers) as a potential peril to the Eurocentric
135
ethic introduced in the colonized land from across the Atlantic. Sadly though, the loss of
local-based knowledge exacerbates the suffering of the people, and eradicates medical
information that can save people’s lives. The narrator reveals the cultural infringements that
he witnesses:
Despite being the youngest director ever appointed by the King and approved by my
colleagues throughout the Empire, I had faced resistance to change and especially
to the new institute of medical research that I had established in Spain and here at
the university. This institute would implement the latest medical advancements of
Europe and apply them here to the native population. The physicians in Mexico
would begin to study these new discoveries and make them available to the mass
population. In this way, the male and female Spanish-speaking practitioners of
witchcraft, the popular curanderos, would be forced out of circulation. (15-16)
Dr. Gregorio Revueltas’ soliloquies disclose the ways that Eurocentric scientific endeavors
and primitive healing practices of the indigenous populations in the Americas can conjoin
in order for humanity to evade the looming danger of annihilation. However, the profound
knowledge he acquires in the heart of an imperialist milieu is the urgent need to retain
localized practices as a natural flow of information. Dr. Gregorio Revueltas apprehends the
political necessity in handling indigenous peoples with diplomacy, allowing them to
incorporate their self-identities into the colonizer’s frame of mind, and urges “[t]he Holy
Office [to] stop persecuting the curanderos, for they are an asset to [Spain]” (40).
‘Book II’ unfolds in Delhi, “a barrio of Southern California, the real Aztlán” (71).
Chicano Doctor Gregory Revueltas practices in a southern California barrio clinic. The
narrator identifies with the barrio and traces in Delhi the mythic locale of his Indian origins.
Yet, the regression to a glorious past contradicts with the social scene of segregation and
violence that engulfs his ethnic kin. The narrator comments:
The barrios of Southern California, the real Aztlán, the origins of my Indian past,
shared in common the kind of housing built. The well-tended flower gardens, the
beautiful faces marked by the history of young and old Chicanos who worked,
studied, loved, hated and helped each other in times of need, and just as easily shot
each other to watch a brother or sister bleed to death on the pavement. For revenge,
for the reputation of my sister, for a bad drug deal, for pride, for the honor of family,
for their barrio, the homeboys and homegirls would explain as they lay dying from
a huge hole made by a 357 magnum bullet fired from a cruising car at eleven-thirty
at night, just when the party was underway. (71)
Violence, drugs, and AIDS are the different names of the plague ravaging
contemporary societies. More specifically, ‘Book II: Delhi’ confers HIV virus as an ominous
hazard to human communalities, and projects non-scientific knowledge of the periphery, as
the panacea or the antidote to medical expertise. Doctor Gregory Revueltas is earnestly
infatuated with an Anglo actress. But, Sandra Spears is a hemophiliac, and because of the
repeated blood transfusions she undergoes, she contracts AIDS. Sandra is excluded from
mainstream medicinal practices, afflicted by marginalization, and eventually confined to a
hospital ward. For white America, Sandra represents “a human scourge, a Pandora’s box
136
filled with diseases capable of destroying humanity” (112). The medical staff refuses to treat
her, complaining “that they did not get combat pay for endangering their lives with scum
like her” (112). In order to alleviate the agony caused by her decaying condition, Doctor
Gregory Revueltas takes Sandra to Mexico, where she is reverently treated by local healers.
In Mexico, the couple is earnestly welcomed by curanderas/os, and Sandra is affectionately
tended for her disease.
We spent several days exploring the countryside surrounding the ancient town of
Tepotzotlan. The Indians offered their homes and we joined in the celebration of the
energy of Tepoztecatl, the rustic god of the harvest and the strong drink. […] In those
moments of joy I forgot about Sandra’s illness. […] The curanderos tended to her.
They taught her about herbs and plants to ease her pain. […] [T]hey were not afraid
of Sandra’s illness. (122)
Doctor Gregory Revueltas and Sandra’s short stay in Mexico City encapsulates an
illuminating antithesis to the carefully stratified and exclusive society north of the border.
In sharp contrast to the hideousness assigned to the ailing actress by Anglo medical
practitioners, the cultural cosmos in Mexico allows the protagonists of the tale to immerse
themselves in the essence of human values fortified by the significance of ethnoculture.
‘Book III: LAMEX’ is science fiction or a projection into a future, transnational
context of civic being. The topos of the tale is the confederation of Lamex, “the region from
the center of Mexico to the Pacific Coast […] known as the Lamex Costal Region of the Triple
Alliance. The Lamex Coastal Region is also the Lamex Health Corridor of the Triple Alliance”
(134). The setting has transfigured from the conquered land in ‘Book I’ and the tightly
patrolled border zone in ‘Book II’ into a transnational landscape of economic stability. The
borderlands space is no longer defined by a strict dividing line between two nations, but
facilitates people’s aspirations for “comfort and safety, not love and happiness” (150).
All along what used to be the border between the United States and Mexico, the
maquiladora concept flourished. About twenty years after the turn of the century,
the border became stabilized and eventually abolished. […] Everyone worked in the
manufacturing industry and seemed to be content. Poverty, hunger, crime had been
eliminated by jobs. (151)
The narrator of the tale is an odd persona, who oscillates between the technological
advances of his era and the traditional, healing practices of the past. Dr. Gregory Revueltas
is the grandson of the narrator in ‘Book II’ and “the Medical Director [of Lamex]. [His]
particular specialty is medical-biological environmental genetics, a long title for a simple
doctor of gene engineering” (134). The narrator symbolizes a temporal continuity of socio-
historical being in the borderlands, eager to relate the ubiquitous technology that encases
people’s lives in 2079 with the simplicity of his grandfather’s world. So, he retreats in a
library in Mexico City, unearths various books and notes, and commences an odd research
study into the practices of curanderismo. The writings that the narrator brings to light
137
record the healing powers of mestizaje, and the immense possibilities in the use of local-
based knowledge.67
Lamex confederation boasts state-of-the-art, technological matrixes of existence,
which can transfer citizens across the corridor between Los Angeles and Mexico City “on a
supersonic travelway,” detect pollution and even transform human species into robot
hybrids (150). Yet, Lamex is threatened by an insurgent plague that exterminates the
population, and none of the gadgetry at hand in this techno-dominated realm can curb the
epidemic from spreading. The plague translates into environmental destruction, as the
disease originates in the oceans, approaches the coastal metropolis of Lamex, and infects its
residents overnight. Dr. Gregory Revueltas relays the formidable advance of the pollutants
from the sea into the mainland, the ways the toxins infest the body, and the accumulation of
contaminants in the human tissues with the following inner monologue:
Totally unpredictable, these spontaneous plagues could appear anywhere. Produced

by humanity’s harvest of waste, they travelled through the air, land and sea and
penetrated populated areas, sometimes killing thousands. Scientists throughout the
world had identified thousands of these living cancers of earth. They were of all sizes,
colors and smells. Some were invisible. From our pollution we had created masses
that destroyed or deformed everything in their path. (138-139)68
However, Doctor Gregory Revueltas makes the groundbreaking, and at the same time
rebellious, medical discovery that pure-blooded Mexicans have mutated to adjust the threat
of rampant pollution. In other words, the narrator contends that only mestiza/o inhabitants
of Mexico City can provide the remedy or the antibody to the pandemic. The half-breed
mestizas/os in the borderlands help Doctor Revueltas retain hope for the survival of
humanity. The scientific discovery he makes is based on the bibliographical research he
conducts in his ancestor’s plague-year diaries. The volumes of notes he reads in the
confinement of a Mexican library reveal the ways in which primitive healing practices of the
past can restrain the plague. And in a subversive, literary twist, the narrator’s high-tech
learnedness is instantly disempowered, because of being inculcated with profound
mediations of mundane, healing knowledge from the past. Doctor Gregory Revueltas
ventures a spatio-temporal detour in his ancestors’ recordings of crises in the borderlands,
defies the advanced gadgetry that is persistently forced onto him, and discovers the cure for
the plague. ‘Book III’ introduces an incisive, ecocritical reading of the borderlands, and
foresees ecodestruction as a catastrophic affliction that can exterminate civilization. Morales
discusses environmental exigency as a looming threat to humanity, and the border
transmutes into a shocking demarcation between ecological purity and contamination. 69
67The term mestizaje refers to the biological, cultural and religious commixture between the indigenous populations of the
Americas and the Spanish conquistadores. The encounter of the two populations (conquered and conquerors) gave rise to
racial subjectivities and cultural identities spread across Latin America. However, the study of mestizas/os expands the
approach to their biological makeup beyond the mixing of two groupings (indios and the Spanish). The current definition
of mestizaje relates to multilayered miscegenation, which includes segments of Moorish, African, Native American and
white European descent. For an insightful approach to mestizaje, see Pérez-Torres (2006).
68 Morales’ description of sea pollution relates to the marine debris currently floating the North Pacific Ocean. Widely
known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, this immense collection of non-biodegradable
substances may be even as twice as big as Continental U.S.A.
69 In a thought-provoking way, Chicano thinker Devon G. Peña situates the study of ecology in the realms of politics.
According to Peña, “ecology can easily be read as an antireductionist and anticapitalist discourse. Its texts are grounded in
the opposition of civil society to environmental destruction, and they provide a radical scientific basis from which to
138
The Rag Doll Plagues focuses on the traumas, reflections and resolutions that daunt
and define the lives of three Hispanic doctors. Although the narrators of the three books
impart socio-political exigencies of different historical accord, their lives are interconnected
on the basis of their ardent attempts to battle deadly, infectious diseases and grasp cultural
collision. The three tales divulge the multiple tragedies the narrators experience on both
personal and communal levels, tragedies which coincide with fatal malady and conquest.
Morales’ thorough and unreserved exposure of denigration across time underpins his
hindsight that “[f]ear extends time” (14). Along the lines of the three physicians’ efforts to
combat the outburst of three devastating epidemics, the three books tackle multiple
problematics related with some of the tenets of (post)colonial studies, namely imperialist
encounters, urban segregation, cultural hybridization, ethnorelativism and border
existence.
Although the time frames of the three sections in the novel change, the overall flow
of the narrative is consistent with the notion of topos or setting, which remains invariable
throughout the text. Furthermore, Morales aligns the three books thematic concerns with
his perceptive approach to politics as repeated narratives of abuse. In The Rag Doll Plagues,
the borderlands space directs our attention to sites of discrimination and
disenfranchisement. For example, the encounters between the colonizers and the colonized
in ‘Book I’ are readily decoded as an uneven battle between the indigenous populations and
the conquistadores. Indeed, the conquered masses are degraded to the position of human
capital, “a decaying humanity” that is doomed to annihilation (31). In ‘Book II,’ Chicanos in
the barrios of Orange County, Los Angeles, are excluded from a potent Anglo American
context, largely disfavored for their ethnic identities, and also relegated to the standing of
parochial subjectivities. Quite shockingly, the “Orange County Register” publishes a
dithyrambic review of a theatrical piece in the Delhi barrio, only to complement the appraisal
of the production with a disparaging comment against its Mexican American audience:
“How can anyone enjoy a serious play sitting next to someone dressed like a hood?” (92)
And the editor of the Register reinforces white America’s anathema for the intrusion of the
Hispanic community into the world of arts by describing them as “barrio homeboys,
Mexican gangsters […] absurd and defiant sitting in the architectural dignity of the [Orange
County Performance] Center. They should not have attended, if only to see one performing
actress [Sandra Spears]” (92). Quite similarly, in ‘Book III,’ Mexicans and Mexican
Americans occupy the fringes of a fictive, borderless zone between Mexico and the U.S.A.
Although the border has ceased to exist as a political dissection between two national
territories, abstract barriers between the supreme race and the underdogs continue to
dominate peoples’ lives. These barriers exclude ethnic minorities from entering the
mainstream world of Lamex, and demarcate this imaginary society by reinforcing crude
distinctions between the ruling forces and the underprivileged.
In conclusion, Alejandro Morales’ novel The Rag Doll Plagues is divided into three
separate sections, which masterfully create a palimpsest of socio-historical relevance.70
challenge the legitimacy of the fundamental economic laws of global capitalism. Ecology as a subversive science begets
environmentalism as a new social movement” (6).
70The critical approach to textual flow as a palimpsest revises long-standing critical approaches to literature. Instead of
historicizing the text in a linear mode of study, the metaphor of the palimpsest facilitates the exploration of literary
analysis in a multilayered way. Susan Watkins highlights that “[l]ike ‘revision,’ the concept of the palimpsest balances the
idea of absence with presence, erasure with revelation. Literally, a manuscript which has been erased and written over
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Morales surpasses time delineations, and interprets experience in a concurrent and

overlapping mode of study. Indeed, The Rag Doll Plagues is a palimpsest that transcends
chronological restrictions, since “[t]he ‘present’ of the palimpsest is only constituted in and
by the ‘presence’ of texts from the ‘past,’ as well as remaining open to further inscriptions by
texts of the ‘future.’ The presence of texts from past, present (and possibly the future) in the
palimpsest does not elide temporality but evidences the spectrality of any ‘present’ moment
which always already contains within it ‘past,’ ‘present’ and future moments” (Dillon 2007,
37). The text attains an elaborate correlation between past, present and future ethno-
cultural narrations, thus weaving the historical fabric of being-in-the-borderlands.
Moreover, the interplay between chronologically diverse racio-cultural tales consents to the
rise of an enlightening understanding of social existence across time and space.
(Post)colonialism, prejudice, health deterioration, organic pollution, the merits of
spirituality and the pitfalls of technology are some of the philosophical negotiations of the
text, which interlace numerous definitions of experience. All three sections of The Rag Doll
Plagues add nuance to one another because their distinct historical lense(s) conjoin in the
realms of a weighty, spatio-temporal crossroads. Historicity and the hermeneutics of the
borderlands inform the text in sync, and entwine a complex system of understanding human
interaction. Morales construes humanity’s history through the perpetual mutations of
expansionism, and the concomitant abuse of the less privileged by elitist, authorial forces.
The Rag Doll Plagues is an ambitious, prophetic undertaking, which ventures a complex
detour into the political dynamics that define peoples’ prosperity and social standing.
Morales is a dexterous writer of political, cultural and environmental quandary. His
visionary writing escapes definitions of generic quality, incorporates multiple angles of
apprehending human existence, and reveals some of the complexities that arise in the
precarious junctures of historicity, political entanglement, cultural intereference, and
environmental crisis. The three tales in The Rag Doll Plagues trace the crises associated with
the borderlands, and integrate varied, theoretical approaches to self-existence. History,
space and ecology are succinct segments of Morales’ thematic continuum in a novel that
reads as a penetrating, literary venture, one that explicates the sources of human misery.
References
1. Anzaldúa G., 1987, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, San Francisco:
Aunt Lute Books.
2. Anzaldúa G., A. Keating, 2000, Interviews/Entrevistas, New York: Routledge.
3. Concannon K., F.A. Lomelí, M. Priewe (eds.), 2009, Imagined Transnationalism:
U.S. Latino/a Literature, Culture, and Identity, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Dillon S., 2007, The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory, London: Bloomsbury.
5. Fischer M. M. J., 1986, “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory,” Writing
Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, eds. J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus,
Berkeley: U. of California Press, 194-233.
6. King K., 1990, Producing Sexes: Theory, and Culture, New York: Routledge.
again, the palimpsest bears textual traces of its history as visible evidence of change. In poststructuralist criticism, the
palimpsest is a marker of skepticism about the notion of origin and suggests the endless deferral of final and fixed
meaning that lies at the heart of language” (248).
140
7. Mignolo W. D., M. V. Tlostanova, 2006, “Theorizing From the Borders: Shifting to

Geo and Body-Politics of Knowledge,” European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 205-
221.
8. Morales A., 1992, The Rag Doll Plagues, Houston: Arte Público Press.
9. Neff M., 2006, “Approaches to a Hemispheric America in The Rag Doll Plagues. An
Interview with Chicano Author Alejandro Morales,” Iberoamericana 6(22): 173-178.
10. Peña D. G. (ed.), c1998, Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin, Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
11. Pérez-Torres R., 2006, Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
12. Watkins S., 2006, “‘Grande Dame’ or ‘New Woman’: Doris Lessing and the
Palimpsest,” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 17: 243-62.
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PART 3
SPACES AND BUILDINGS WITH VIVID MEMORY
142
DESIGNING AN (URBAN) INTERIOR SPACE OF COMMEMORATION: A REFERRED
STUDIO
Melahat Kucukarslan Emiroglu
Regarding the nature of how to visually commemorate a war or an earthquake or a death or

a genocide of which a few people have general knowledge, it always had been a compulsory
for the memorial spaces to inform visitors on the purpose, outcomes, and historical
significances of the traumatic event for the sake of dead one’s efforts, sacrifices, and
legitimacy. Moreover, it is also perceived as a required attitude from public in memorial
spaces to express their thankfulness, respect, celebrate heroes and rulers, grandeur and
glory. However, in these places of memory people encounter with history, as Benjamin puts
it, a history that is nothing more than the narrative of the most dominant group in the society
(1968:253-264). This history, which is represented with officially constructed narratives
when confronted with individual memories in any time can give a way to construct a
different narrative for the past hidden in potential paths that official histories never took.
Pierre Nora with the term lieux de memorie defines how memory crystallizes and secrete
itself at a particular historical moment as a turning point where consciousness of a break
with the past is bound with the sense that memory has been torn (1989:7-24).
Indeed, the concern in this paper is that there cannot be a memorial without de-
territorialisation and re-territorialisation of previously configured relationships of the
things that are articulated to memorialized one by the one experiencing the memorial space.
In this context memory is taken as a territorial relation, thus there is de/re-territorialisation
of memory. In this sense, design of a memorial at present cannot articulate with the entirety
of the past, and also with the present within present. A territory within a Deleuzean language
can be defined as perpetually changing configuration of various interrelated assemblages.
Since Parr states as the mistake of Freud, and as Deleuze conceives it, is the comprehension
of how the past defines the present and future (2008:24), Deleuzean “territory” constituted
by everlastingly changing configuration of multiple interrelated assemblages, a specific
territory in time may become the surface where de-territorialisation, re-territorialisation
take place. In doing so, meaning can be ‘de-territorialized’ and “re-territorialized” over time,
thus liberated by articulations of relations and “re-articulated temporarily” (Leone
2013:64). As in Deleuze and Guattari’s line of flight, during a minor case a triggered moment
in memory gives a way to new articulation and pre-established configuration of memory
liberates. This liberation challenges the changing configuration of assemblage forming
historically specific territory, and re-territorialized (Küçükarslan Emiroğlu and Çimşit
2014:154).
Consequently, these arguments leaded to a new discourse, to be enhanced here, which
points out that such a de-territorialized context, in which the transformation in
configuration of thoughts and feelings, can create independent possibilities for new
uncharted territories of memory. Therefore, the design of a memorial is considered as a form
of a leakage to urban topography that can be only occurred through de-territorialised
boundaries. In this respect, a space of commemoration –a memorial can be in anywhere –
meaning out of the context of the event or persona that it is meant to be remembered. The
important concern here is what is being triggered during experience of the confronter.
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Part 3 Melahat Kucukarslan Emiroglu Designing an (Urban) Interior…
Particularly, there had been some examples of interventions for deconstructing the
notion of singular narrative of the past so that freeing the monument from its rigidness
demagogy and history’s certainty. James Young has coined the term counter-monuments to
describe the way that the self-effacing quality of these interventions not only places the act
of memory in the hands the beholder, but also undermines the basic assumptions of the
monument itself in the process” (Stubblefield 2011:1). While Young’s concept has become a
cornerstone of memory and monument studies, the case of the Monument Against Fascism
suggests the need for a reconsideration of its fundamental assumptions: “Disappearance of
monument … an already remembered past that actively repressed the creative aspects of
memory as much as it reinforced existing narratives of history” (ibid. 2). John Gerz and
Esther Shalev-Gerz’s Monument Against Fascism (1986) consists of towering but
nondescript stele plated with soft lead –the plaque accompanying the monument inviting
visitors to etch their name into the column’s surface. This invitation is for contributing to
the denunciation of fascism and concurrently the monument itself. The inscription of the
plaque was declaring that they invite the citizens of Harburg and visitors to the town to add
their names there to theirs. By doing this, as more and more names cover the tall column, it
will gradually be lowered into the ground. One day it will disappear completely, and the site
of the Harburg Monument Against Fascism will be a blank. “In the end, it is only we
ourselves who can rise up against injustice” (ibid. 2). Finally, as Stubblefield informs the
immediate environment of the column was sufficiently covered with writings of the public,
and it was lowered into the ground, “making available a new surface for inscription. This
occurred eight times until in 1993 the monument disappeared, leaving only a small window
into its resting place and a plaque that lists the chronology of its departure” (ibid. 1).
By taking roots from this case, a promoting and promising form of revitalizing the
past through kinetic exchange between viewer and the work, as a multi-vocal and dynamic
articulation can be proposed, which is emerging from the experience of the site, and
Stubblefield defines this as a “mock” of the traditional monument’s certainty of history”
(ibid. 1). As Albert Boime summarizes, Lenin employed this strategy to “liberate monuments
from their supernatural look of frozen solemnity and activate them as humanly accessible
agencies advancing the progress of the revolution. Not designed for eternity but for eventual
self-destruction” (1993:218). Additionally, Adrian Parr presents a detailed study of
contemporary forms of public remembrance and considers the different character that
traumatic memory takes throughout the sphere of cultural production and argues that
contemporary memorial culture has the power to put traumatic memory to work in a positive
way (2008:24). Drawing on her interdisciplinary approach on phenomenon of traumatic
theory and public remembrance an argument can be proceeded declaring that
commemoration space for a traumatic event(s) may trigger positive feelings of beholders.
Besides, in the conclusion of a presented study71 of the author in 2014 on design of
memorials, there have raised an emergence of a distinction between the constructions of
monuments or memorials. This distinction was concerning the arguments above.
Speculations on possibilities of a design theorization of memorials were considered as
memorials of remembrance that are actually non-designed -a kind of nomadic, de-/re-
oriented, and out of context. This speculation tried to figure out the possible acquisitions
71 The mentioned study here is presented in 7th International Deleuze Studies Conference: Models, Machines and
Memories by Küçükarslan Emiroğlu, M. (with F. Cimşit Koş) entitled as Memorial as Minor Territory or Design as Minor
Literature at İstanbul Technical University on 14-16 July 2014, in İstanbul, Turkey (published in Abstracts, p.154-155).
144
could be gathered from deep analysis of spontaneous memorials of contemporary people.

Indeed, Parr mentions on spontaneous memorials as a common public response to death as
familiar expressions like flowers, notes which permanent structures has less impact on social
interactions. This demonstrates neither a building nor a structure, rather kind of a planted
area producing an individuating difference that is implicitly transformative. The idea of
being non-designed here reinforces the spontaneous articulation of confronter’s memory
during present experience and subliminally engaging into new spontaneous configuration
of a specific assemblage. In respect to this, rather than situating a memorial site-specific,
what is important for the design of a memorial is to liberate the possible positive derivations
that could be recalcitrant to officially written traumatic narratives. Because each
remembering creates a new image or new articulation with past, any landscape can act as
the thoughts of the past, concurrently exercise in contemporary memory. Enacting as the
past thoughts within a new confrontation and engagement with current ones can trigger a
potential to association with the content of transformation via creating medium for
de/reterritorialization of thoughts and feelings –in a minor moment as a line of flight.
In a particular case, the Walter Benjamin Memorial (1994) in Portbou is designed by
Dani Karavan as “a sculptural installation thoroughly integrated into the landscape. In
Karavan’s works in general, rather than the work incorporating the landscape, the landscape
becomes the catalyst that activates the work”72. Drawing on this final example, ultimately
the content of the following graduate studio is created and organized through the lines of the
arguments mentioned up to now by linking them with very crucial last one. An interior space
of commemoration integrated within urban topographical folds is taken as a concern for
special context -leakage- to urban space considering a ‘minor’ case for the beholders. The
outcomes of the projects can project new ideas for creating design theorizations for
discourses of designing for minor moments by triggering and giving way for new
articulations to individual’s memory, within the experience among striated surfaces of urban
topography and its interior folds. Consequently, the urban topography is metaphorically
taken as topography of memory independent from locations of specific events.
Refereed Studio
The subject of graduate course IMT 5401 Interior Architectural Design Project 1 is
explicating relationships between space and memory conceptually. In this context,
definitions and concepts related to space and memory are taken into consideration in order
to question interrelations between the connotations of spatial memory or memorial space.
As Nora explains memory as “by nature multiple and yet specific; collective, plural, and yet
individual. .... Memory takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images, and objects
….” (1989:9), the effects of memory of individual on spatial experience, and in contrast the
influence of spatial elements on memorialisation of things and events comes to being as a
very complex interconnected study area. In this regard by making catalogue search, students
conducted two-month research and made analysis on examples of memory - space
interrelations in architectural field, finally proposed individual subjects and related spatial
design principles for commemoration of these subjects.
72Expressions are taken from web-site dedicated to Walter Benjamin and Portbou titled as Passages of Contemporary
Culture, available at http://walterbenjaminportbou.cat/en/content/lobra [date of access April 17].
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The project whose environmental context is proposed by students is an 4 weeks

experimental project is given as a 100-150m2 area of an imaginative interior space
Topography is regarded as a surface having inherent layers (strata) of urban memory.
Originating from the role and influence of dynamics of memory, it is intended to conduct
discussions on moving away from commemorating experience as being a monument
encountered on urban space, and rather transforming it into a spatial experience as
confronted. The priority is to design the experience of beholder in relation with this
unprompted spatial environment.
As a provocation, the only compulsory source to be analysed required from students
before the last feedback with an intention of articulating a different point of view to their
accumulated ideas was Ahenk Yılmaz’s Freedom in the Topography of Memory: Gallipoli
Battlefields and Remembering as a Spatial Experience (2011). The aim was introducing
students the concept of counter-monument, basically describing a space of private or
liberated memory, where on the other hand monument is institutionalized or dictated
memory. The hidden schedule here was to question the ways in which this articulation
affected their subject choices, their conceptual definitions, and intentions of triggering
challenging discourses.
Outcomes: Briefs of Selected Projects
Following are briefs of six selected proposals of projects as outcomes of the referred
studio described according to their outline’s theoretical concentrations, choice of subject,
proposal for spatial design principle, the triggering discourse, and proposal’s forwarded idea
on the essence of designing a memorial space.
1st selected example (Figure 1) is an interior space of a commemoration for Turkish
worldwide poet “Nazım Hikmet Ran” designed by Tuğçe Gökçen; graduated from Interior
Architecture and Environmental Design department. The outline of her theoretical study
concentrates on experiencing, perception and feeling of physical space, especially dealing
with bodily sensations. The study explains ways in which individual constructs spatial
memory during spatial experience, questions the interrelations of memory-space-image and
their contributions to create spaces of memory. The preserved Robben Island as
musuemized after the period of “Nelson Mandela’s Captivity” exemplified as a motivation of
choice for the subject.
Her spatial design principle is “accessing to spatial correspondences of the senses that
constitute the process of perception. Therefore, the subject titled “process of captivity of the
poet” formed in three phases as; captivity, intermediary territory, and freedom. Triggering
discourse is poet’s hopeful descriptions about life and future. The scoped commemoration
form is not reminding sorrows of captivity, rather an articulation of hope (captivity) and
poet’s re-territorialisation of prisoned space as home and forecourt (intermediary territory)
as channel of reaching freedom. Analysis of poems manifests oneness of form and function
leaded her to spatial formation as continuous surfaces generating each other by
interchanging functions and visa versa.
Situated at hills of city, with overlooking vista to sea is based on the imaginations of
the poet in his verses. Citizen encounters spontaneously with the most closed space
(captivity) designed by caved verses (selected from his works during captivity) on all interior
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surfaces: can be sensed haptic experience. Concurrently, interior surfaces give chance to
interact with outer sounds, echoes of poet’s verses and smells of outer world. Concluding
stage reaches to intermediary territory and freedom with realization of all sensed
mechanisms of perception articulated with a new experience of captivity. Forwarded idea in
conclusion is: Layers of urban topography are dynamic and changeable similar to human’s
unconscious and conscious memories.
2nd selected example of outcomes (Figure 2) of the studio is proposed as an interior
space of a commemoration for “Soma Coal Mine Disaster” designed by Doğan Güzel,
graduated from department of Ceramics and currently conducting Interior Architectural
Projects. The outline of its theoretical study, by highlighting psychology of society
concentrates on communal memory or collective memory, and sensations in remembering.
In this context, the study explains differentiations between commemorating sensations as
being lived or unlived. Peter Eisenman’s Jewish Memorial in Berlin is stated as the
motivation of selection of the subject. The spatial design principle is “enhancing the process
of lived experience during the disaster by various parties; the ones on the earth and the ones
under the earth”. In this respect, the subject is described as “process of expectancy lived by
the one’s stucked in the mine and spontaneously by their relatives”.
The triggering discourse is not the people died during the disaster, but possible
empathy to the process they lived there by enhancing spontaneous expectancy of outsiders
with frequently ascending anxiety by increasing numbers of no-name death bodies coming
up from the mile. The context is a natural park, originating from the organic structure of
miles, thus the site is generated as a kind of projection from park’s natural topography.
Citizen of any urban context find theirselves spontaneously on a ramp descending slightly
under the earth level, encountering with narrow, tunnel-like spaces and naturally formed
seating areas, and enlightened ever-changing numbers embedded on surfaces of inner
space. Hidden light sources underskin of the surfaces expresses the nature of mile’s territory.
At the very narrowest area, numbers are reached to 118, and the daylight by sensing the
ascending terra to spontaneous flow of Natural Park. Forwarded idea in conclusion is: Urban
topography is an auxiliary surface to be appropriated for citizens in order to interact
immanent relations by creating interiority.
3rd selected example of outcomes (Figure 3) of the graduate studio is a space of
commemoration for “earthquake” designed by Tomurcuk Işıl Pınarcı; graduated from
department of Architecture. Its theoretical study, by highlighting concepts related space and
psychology, concentrates on effects of built-form on sensations and cognition. The National
9/11 Memorial in New York is exemplified as the motivation. Earthquake taken as a
metaphor; as an event which is unexpected and whiplash, destructs daily routine, can
transform into a traumatic psychology, consequently territorialized a moment in one’s
memory.
The essence of designing a memorial space integrated with urban topography is
comprehended as a suggestion for each citizen to let them live their own experience.
Moreover, translation of these ideas to spatial design principle is focused on using urban
landscape elements as a part of experience. With referencing to the idea that “remembering
together prerequisites forgetting together”, proposal is titled as “a space of remembering
earthquake”. Triggering discourse is targeting survived people; meaning that although there
are moments like earthquakes throughout life, it should be perceived that life can still go on.
Indeed, the context as a form of a crack on a fault line constituted by integration of
147
topographic layers. It is to be encountered spontaneously on the way of a very straight,

regular path, penetrating to interior space naturally by folds topographical layers. At the
same time, citizen also experience the shadow plays by the leakage of daylight into surfaces,
while seating, thinking, walking, etc. There are various opportunities of entering and exits
occurred by topographical folds to make them sense that they can go back to routine daily
life.
Figure 3:
Forwarded idea in conclusion is: Engaging into the folds of urban topography can
liberate the citizen’s experience considering their territorialized memory about the
negativeness of earthquake while spontaneously being in and out of interior’s so-called
secure boundaries.
4th selected example of outcomes (Figure 4) of the graduate studio is proposed as an
space of a commemoration for -specifically dated “1999 Gölcük Earthquake”- in Turkey
designed by Hande Kurnaz, who is graduated from department of Interior Architecture and
participated to studio as an Erasmus Student from Australia. The outline of its theoretical
study concentrates on the learning and lessons gained from collectively shared moments.
Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin is exemplified as the motivation for selection
of the subject.
comprehended as a reflection of tents constructed by survivors in cooperation during
earthquake. Translation of these ideas to spatial design principle is categorized in four
stages: destruction, initiation of co-operation, learning/remembrance, and sustainable life.
All stages reflecting post-periods of the earthquake are supported with visual demonstration
inside the memorial space. Triggering discourse enhances that besides the lost ones during
this natural disaster, there are acquisitions like co-operation, solidarity. Indeed, the context
of the project is situated at the condensed centre of the city, interpenetrating to other built
elements of urban space, thus easily reachable. Surrounding environment, described as
topographical objects; so it is embedded to this urban texture, affects the rigid forms of the
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designed space. Four stages are organized in different levels offering different activities to
trigger positive moments of memory. Close to the exit, there placed a bridge-like space
leading to outer urban area and at the same time interacting with lower level, enhanced with
the light penetrating from top level imposing to lower level. Forwarded idea in conclusion
is: The use of interiority of urban topographical folds can give chance to achieve a place for
confrontation with inner territories of individual’s memory at the interim of everyday travel.
5th selected example of outcomes (Figure 5) of the studio is a space of commemoration
for “war” designed by İrem Elif Yalçınkaya; graduated from department of Interior
Architecture. The outline of its theoretical study concentrates on the effects of
monumentalization of communal traumatic events on collective memory. The Auschwitz
Internment Camp turned into museum is exemplified as the motivation of selection of the
subject.
comprehended as Freud’s concept related with topography of consciousness, which is
composed of three phases; consciousness (the surface of individual’s awareness), pre-
consciousness (the surface of present unconsciousness, but can be brought to consciousness
surface by attention) unconsciousness (the surface of individual’s unaware desires, stimulus,
triggers, etc.). Moreover, the proposal for spatial design principle is arranged according to
trigger all these levels of consciousness; entrance (space of super-ego / by commemorating
deaths remembering all wars), intermediary space of awareness (ID / listening / reading the
events from another point of view), end space (ego/ creating awareness / the area of peace-
questioning, by potting).
The triggering discourse is questioning or re-thinking the concept of battling.
Therefore, it is intended to forward the idea of war itself, rather than commemorating a
specific war. In this context, initiating with the question of what really a war is, at
spontaneously asks whether the one who experiences space is conciliatory or not. The
context of the project is a valley where it spontaneously interiorizes the citizen. While
walking on a green area, the terra is formed as a descending slop in optimum human statue.
6th selected example of outcomes (Figure 6) is on “Persian Islamic Revolution”. The
outline of its theoretical study is focused on things being commemorated, elements of
cultural symbols and collective memory of shared practices. The Memorial of Revolution
1956 of Hungary is exemplified as motivation of selection of the subject. Therefore to express
re-transformation, spaces are staged as lived good memories of freedom, transition after
revolution, and the transformed situation as loss of freedom. The subject is titled as “the
revolution that transformed the name of Iran into republic of Islamic Iran”. Design principle
is focused on concept of transformation which is a reversely revolution of freedom.
An interim stage demonstrating the period of revolution is designed by topographical
elements as irreversible. At concluding stage, strips projected from topography are wrapping
to generate a possible return for a good future. The context is a very remote urban space, far
away from city centre and built-environment. Triggering discourse is to make people sense
the feeling of freedom, spontaneously sensing its counterpart. Forwarded idea is:
topography is an auxiliary element not only for building boundaries of interiors, but also for
visual representations of collective memory.
Epilogue
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This paper intrinsically highlighting questions such as how to design a memorial?

how memorials are being designed? what is the relation between design and memorial?,
demonstrated outcomes of a conducted project in a graduate Interior Design studio. The
outcomes give impression that urban skin comes to being as a medium for developing a new
design principle for searching ways in which the forms and methods of commemoration can
be challenged through looking to commemorated event as critical issue –diachronically,
rather than dominating a concrete form imposed on the surface of urban topography with a
constant status which can not be criticized, changed, free of new articulation–
synchronically.
Proposals were examining the relations between design and memorial by examining
following arguments: challenging the patterns of commemoration forms; memorial space
situated out of commemorated event’s territory; counter-monument as out-of-form; and not
the form but the pattern of commemoration is ‘becoming’ within experience. These
arguments reflect a manner of transformation in memory articulated diachronically with
new ephemeral definition of power and resistance. In this situation can only a memorial
space empowers as reality within present experience. Respect to this, urban topography’s
“striation and smoothing” in Deleuze and Guattari taken as “precisely the passages and
combinations: how the forces at work within space continually striate it, and how in the
course of its striation it develops other forces and emits new smooth spaces” (2004:551)73
comes to being as an mediating channel for creating independent articulations to more
democratic use of shared lands. Interpenetrating with each other urban space and memory
can co-create new de-territorialized configurations of assemblages by inclusion of
interactive design interventions spontaneously.
As a very naive endeavour, the studies in referred studio at least raised following
(Figure 7) keywords, questions, concepts, phrases, derivations of words, which are
categorized by election to their interrelations and connotations, and grouped in sequence of
emergence throughout the pre-research and design development studies Ultimately, they
are used in invitation poster to provoke faculty members be aware of the content of open
jury and the project.
It is investigated that students who had background with ceramics were more familiar
to integrate their selves with forming urban topography and internalize its layers as
territories of urban memory. In the very final example, Arda Laçin’s proposal (Figure 8) for
commemoration of the shared practices during a public challenge in İstanbul in 2013, even
in his very initial model all skin of the earth is comprehended as forming layers of urban
interior. Site being empty of unique traits, invoke a sense of hyperspace, enabling to
remember and re-conceptualize feelings of sharing a common space with unknown others,
co-operate and occupy any part of urban space to create art. Slits created from earth achieved
potential areas to be re-articulated with evoked feelings. Earth, as a counterpart of
earthenware give chance to examine and reformulate diachronically how citizens could
occupy or intervene to it.
Working with this kind of material, a shift between folds can make possible to reach
to an unexpected complexity of the space and folding surfaces. The continues surfaces starts
as ground, then transforms itself into walls, then roofs creating such interconnected voids
73The metaphorical expression in Deleuze and Guattari respect to smooth spaces is worth to add here: “… Even the most
striated city gives rise to smooth spaces: to live in the city as a nomad or as a cave dweller” (2004: 551).
150
and circulation. Invented surfaces are revisited, observed and create memories74.
Ultimately, an (urban) interior space of commemoration constitutes by folds of the strata,
from which meaning-memory map of city is composed of, constituting spatial meaning,
creating channels, mediating this liminal space. Urban stores the collective memories in-
between its striated folds territorialized in different times and places, is independent from
pre-established given meanings. The liminal space of proposed forms of commemoration
places a hyper among all the ascribed meanings and spatialize that hyper. By doing this,
among embedded meanings of everyday places, spatialization of a moment may open slits
to questioning meanings, therefore to de-territorialization of memory and may articulate
with minor ideas, thus re-territorialize memory. This kind of a spatial experience, can not
be created by using concrete ideas, frozen signifiers, in contrast by using neutral non-
representative elements that can address to all times; might also lead individual experiences
of articulation with one’s own memory and individual signification processes in line with
individual diversities.
Figures:
Figure 1: Designer: Tuğçe Gökçen; Graduated From Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design,
Bahçeşehir University. (BAU, Interior Design Master Programme Graduate Studio I, 2015).
74 As Ben Watt-Meyer describes in his Folding Architecture…

151
152
153
154
155
156
157
Figure 2: Designer: Doğan Güzel; Graduated From Department of Ceramics, conducting Interior Architectural Projects
(BAU, Interior Design Master Programme Graduate Studio I, 2015).
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
Figure 3: Designer: Tomurcuk Işıl Pınarcı; Graduated From Department of Interior Architecture. (BAU, Interior Design
Master Programme Graduate Studio I, 2015).
165
166
167
168
Figure 4: Designer: Hande Kurnaz; Graduated From Department of Interior Architecture, Erasmus Student. (BAU,
Interior Design Master Programme Graduate Studio I, 2015).
169
170
171
172
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Figure 5: Designer: İrem Elif Yalçınkaya; Graduated from department of Interior Architecture. (BAU, Interior Design
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175
176
177
Figure 6: Designer: Donya Rebosheh; Graduated From Department of Interior Architecture, Iran. (BAU, Interior Design
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179
180
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Figure 7: A piece from the poster of referred studio IMT5401 (author’s archive, BAU, Interior Design Master Programme
Graduate Studio I, 2015).
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Figure 8: Designer: Arda Laçin; graduated from department of Ceramics, Hacettepe University (BAU, Interior Design
References
1. Araújo M. P. N., dos Santos M. S., 2009, “History, Memory and Forgetting: Political
Implications”, RCCS Annual Review, 01 September 2009, available at
http://rccsar.revues.org/157, [date of access 24.04. 2017].
2. Benjamin W., 1968, “Thesis on the Philosophy of History”, Illuminations, eds. H.
Arendt, New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 253-264.
3. Boime A., 1993, “Prestroika and the Destabilization of the Soviet Monuments”,
Journal of Albert the Institute for History of Art of Slovak Academy of Sciences (2)3:
218.
4. Cimşit Koş F., Küçükarslan Emiroğlu M., 2013, “Reality as a Manner of
Transformation”, Changing Worlds & Signs of the Times: Selected Proceedings from
the 10th International Conference of the Hellenic Semiotics Society, eds. E. Deltsou
and M. Papadopoulou, Volos: Hellenic Semiotics Society, 766-776.
5. Deleuze G., Guattari F., 2003, Kafka Toward a Minor Literature, Minneapol,
London: University of Minnesota Press.
6. Deleuze G., Guattari F., 2004, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
New York: Continuum.
183
7. Küçükarslan Emiroğlu M., Cimşit Koş F., 2014, “Memorial as Minor Terrirtory or
Design as Minor Literature”, 7th International Deleuze Studies Conference: İstanbul
2014 Models, Machines and Memories, eds. E. Görgül and N. Gülmez, Istanbul:
Cenkler Matbaa, 154.
8. Leone M., 2013, “Longing for the Past: The Nostalgic Semiosphere”, 10th
International Conference on Semiotics: Changing Worlds & Signs of the Times:
Book of Abstracts, The Hellenic Semiotics Society: Volos.
9. Nora P., 1989, “Between Memory and History”, Representations Special Issue:
Memory and Counter-Memory Spring (26): 7-24.
10. Parr A., 2008, Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the
Politics of Trauma, USA: Oxford University Press.
11. Stubblefield T., 2011, “Do Disappearing Monuments Simply Dissappear?: The
Counter-Monument in Revision”, Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation,
History, Theory and Criticism 8(2): xii-11.
12. Yılmaz A., 2011, “Freedom in the Topography of Memory: Gallipoli Battlefields and
Remembering as a Spatial Experience”, Studies of Memory in Turkey, eds. L. Neyzi,
İstanbul: İş Bankası Publications, 187-216.
Acknowledgements
It is an honour for me to express my gratitude to Arda Laçin, Doğan Güzel, Donya
Rebousheh, Elif Yalçınkaya, Hande Kurnaz, Tomurcuk Işıl Pınarcı, Tuğçe Gökçen, the
students of IMT5401 İç Mekan Tasarımı 1; who studied with enthusiasm for their proposals.
184
THE ROLE OF TEMPORAL AND PERMANENT URBAN SPACES IN CREATING THE
URBAN IDENTITY
Hasti Khalili
Mohamad Zakeri
Identity is defined as “condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the
qualities, beliefs, etc., that distinguish a person or thing” (Dictionary.com n.d.). This
definition could be used for the city’s identity, too: the special characteristics of each city
constitute the identity of that for citizens and travellers. Nevertheless, it should be
considered that those characteristics are identifiable through understanding the local and
cultural context. The creation of local-cultural context over the generations is owed to the
manner lived within that locale (Oktay 2002, 261-271). In essence, the unique qualities and
characteristics of each society demonstrate its cultural identity. Moreover, the cultural
identity has a firm bonding to geographical areas (Pušić 2004, 3) .
The threshold of each space in the hierarchy of connections between different spaces
defines through the privacy and publicity of it (Franck 2010). David Canter (1997), states
that individual’s identity is interwoven with places which are considered as “private” for him.
Moreover, Canter declares that it is almost impossible to differentiate the evaluation of a
space and its description since the descriptive words indicate our understanding of that
space through evaluation. When we call a place spacious, beautiful and full of spirit, we are
evaluating its characteristics regarding the physical component, the conception/description
of the place and the interaction of space with its users. Canter believes that “place” is the
resultant of the relationships between activities, conceptualizations and physical
characteristics. His theory constitutes a basis for the current study.
Significance of Study
What form the urban identity in citizens and visitors’ minds are mainly the urban
spaces whose dominant attributes make the city clearly distinguishable. Urban spaces
encompass a wide domain of social-cultural use and forms of urbanism. Understanding the
urban spaces is the significant part of studying the urban identity. This also illuminates the
necessity of studying the urban spaces in order to know the urban identity. Moreover,
understanding the urban identity and the influential factors could clarify a range of decision
making problems regarding city planning and development. Because urban development
regardless of cultural and identical aspects alters the sense of place and vanishes the
connection between individuals and their city.
Shiraz and Yazd are of the oldest and most historical cities of Iran which have
significantly dominant core. Regarding the cities need for development and expansion and
their inevitable responsibility in providing modern life essentials studying the role of urban
spaces in creating and maintaining the urban identity is an important point. Likewise,
identifying the drivers and barriers would be a powerful guide for further development or
manipulations of urban spaces and could be the basis for new designs and constructions.
185
Part 3 Hasti Khalili, Mohamad Zakeri The Role of Temporal…
Literature Review
Many of the researchers have been emphasized on the need for place identity. Relph
declares that people need to interact and communicate with significant places. He believes
that places are able to enhance and reflect man’s experience (Relph 1976, 147). The
interaction between individuals and their identity forming environment has a direct
influence on “man’s well-being and emotional stability” (Pušić 2004, 4-6).
In urban scale, physical, social, cultural, historical and functional characteristics of
the city elements form the identity. In other words, the compromised syntax of many factors
creates a comprehensive entity which could be memorable and imageable. However, city is
dynamic by nature; it constantly changes over interaction with residents and in response to
their needs (Falamaki 2004, 277-289) From preservation perspective Falamaki states that
the most significant consideration during the continuous creation and alteration of places is
to avoid demolishing the constructions of cultural and historical values so the connection
between those places, as the context of forming identity, would remain. Likewise, they could
be maintained as urbanization assets and national heritages for the next generations, and
preserve the culture of life in different districts (Falamaki 2004, 277-289)
Detachment of people and places results in “placelessness” (Relph 1976) which
consequently leads to lose individuals’ identity, since it has been experienced that people’s
identity correspond with the places they lived in and it is only retrievable through interaction
with those places. It is also rational and proven that it takes time for the residents to make
connections with their surrounding area (Pušić 2004, 1-6). Therefore, time has become a
significant factor in creation of urban cultures and the sense of place attachment.
Cities have been formed to respond to one of the most fundamental needs of humans
i.e. socializing. Urban spaces are the ground for the citizens to build relationship and
communicate with each other in a large community scale. Urban spaces have remarkable
influences on the qualities of residents’ lives. However, Frank (2010) believes that it is
indistinguishable whether urban spaces are influenced by the inhabitants and created as
people live within them, or residents’ actions/behavior are the consequences of their
surrounding environment. Either ways, the social role of urban spaces are undeniable. In
other words, urban spaces could not be defined unless their social role would be taken into
account as well as their physical attributes.
Composition and Decomposition of Urban Space
What are the characteristics of an ideal urban space? According to Kevin Lynch, “if the
environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with
his own meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and
unmistakable” (Lynch 1960). Urban spaces should provide the freedom of activities and
create an open platform for interaction between users. Few factors in demonstrating the
social role of urban spaces are the range of users, pedestrian and motor traffic, the annual
events and festivities, the traditional and religious customs that held there, and the related
cultural ties. Demolition of such spaces with significant social reputation disconcerts the
unification among the community members while its development could engender mutual
memories for the generations. Furthermore, sustainable growth causes enhancement in
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sense of place and may conduct to residents’ contribution in maintaining the locality. In
cases that an urban space turns to the place for social movements, to convene or to hold
special events, it has become well-known in national and international scale. “Al-Tahrir”
square of Cairo and “Hyde-Park” in London are the few examples.
The physical preservation of the cities’ most important functional, cultural and
historical sites would contribute in maintaining the local sense of place which leads to urban
identity retention In other words, recreating or reinforcing the sense of place through
making connection between the users and the physical features is a milestone to rehabilitate
the urban identity. for instance, in case of Warsaw, which was almost entirely demolished
after the WWII, the city made efforts toward revitalizing the lost identity by reconstruction
of Old Town in its precise former style.
However, the physical attributes of urban spaces might remain relatively unchanged
whilst the spirit would change. Hence, the social role of an urban space is not only
conditional upon the physical features and sustainability rather; a number of issues such as
location, use, land price, management, ownership, and accessibility could be crucially
influential. Thus, the physical preservation is the first and the most tangible step towards
maintaining the locality and urban identity.
Methodology
This research studies the status of main residential, commercial and recreational
centers in 1975 and their development and transfiguration to date in two major historical
cities of Iran: Shiraz and Yazd.
In current study, the urban spaces of significant social values whose physical forms
have remained relatively unchanged while their social role (activity and conception) has
altered or entirely destroyed over a period of 40 years are called as Temporal Urban Spaces.
Contrarily, Permanent Urban Spaces are defined as those that have retained all the three
elements of place; activity, conception and physical characteristics for the study’s period.
In order to demonstrate the study’s period different issues had to be considered; city’s
geographical development has a direct correlation to population. According to demographic
statistics the population of Iran in 2014 has reached about 2.5 times than that of 40 years
ago (Wordometers.info 2016). This happened simultaneously by a huge range of migration
from the villages to major towns and cities. Accordingly, the need for houses and urban
facilities in general has increased and cities faced a remarkable transition in all dimensions.
Thus, the study explores the situation of the most popular urban spaces in this timeframe.
City elements are classified to five types of physical forms (Lynch 1960, 18-21): Paths,
Edges, Districts, Nodes and Landmarks. Considering Lynch’s classification and the three
constituents of space, the status of main and the most popular urban spaces with residential,
commercial and recreational functions in Shiraz and Yazd are studied:
• Main residential districts
• Main commercial paths/nodes
• Main recreational paths/nodes/landmarks
The list of case studies and their classifications are provided on Table 1.
The selection of urban spaces was according to open ended interviews with 34 (Mason
2010) senior residents (60-77) in each city. The interviewees were asked to name the top five
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commercial, residential and recreational centers based upon their own experience and
conception. Then they were asked to rank them from five to one, as the most popular one
gets the highest point. Summing up the points, the two most popular urban spaces in
residential, recreational and commercial categories were selected for each city. The brief
descriptions about the physical attributes and social conditions of each in 1975 have based
on the collective data from interviewees’ narratives and the explained qualities of places
regarding the social role and the most expected actions within the place.
Table 1: The most popular urban spaces of Shiraz and Yazd in 1975
In order to evaluate the places’ elements, specific measures needed to avoid magnifying
or overlooking some characteristics of the case studies. Table 2 illustrates the concerns and
approaches for each of the elements according to designated criteria by UrbSpace Guideline
for making space (P. R. Stiles 2013, 10-16) and APA (American Planning Association 2016,
R. Stiles 2012)
Table 1: Considering issues for evaluating place
Analysis and results
The selected urban spaces of each category (residential, commercial, and recreational)
in Shiraz and Yazd have been evaluated through the seven measures for the three place
elements as represented on Table 2.
There are two urban spaces selected for each category in both cities. The only exception
relates to the recreational center of Yazd that did not have any counterpart. Interviews
demonstrated Amir Chakhmaq Square as the main public space within the city. Other public
spaces were limited to quarters’ centers that used to be the gathering point for the families
living in that quarter. It should be noted that people of Yazd has introverted culture in
general. This means that the majority of their social interactions have confined to indoor
and in-quarter communications. This tendency has been enhanced by taking the climate into
account. In fact, houses have been highly designed climate-compatible to provide a
comfortable zone for inhabitants whereas the surrounded setting is one of the most hot and
arid deserts of the world. The combination of introverted culture, climate intensity and
religious attitude results in limited popularity of urban spaces with recreational character.
Amir Chakhmaq Square is counted as the main public space with recreational
character considering its location, background history, vast dimensions and the open space
development. In addition, the most important religious events such as the public mourning
of Ashoora is held in this place and almost all of the citizens participate in that. However,
less important events are held in the quarters’ centers with limited contribution.
The following tables indicate the status of urban spaces in 1975 according to
interviewees’ descriptions. Each table is followed by the interpretation of their current
situation based upon observation.
Table 3: Residential Urban Spaces in Shiraz
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Eram district:
The majority of Eram district has kept its residential fabric although the adjacent
buildings to the main streets have been mostly allocated to office use and governmental
bureaus which has changed the area’s image. Concerning the natural features, being located
on hillside the area has been popular for its pleasant climate, cypresses and beautiful
flowers. Also, the area has been confined by historic gardens in four dimensions:
Pomegranate garden, Eram garden, the University campus and Azadi Park. Conservation
policies limited the manipulation in the area’s extension. Presence of vast green areas
facilitated this part of the city with mild and pleasant climate. Moreover, Eram Garden,
which is one of the cultural assets and historic landmarks of Shiraz, influences the social
atmosphere of the district noticeably. The old sidewalks are wide comparing to average in
the city and closeness to University increases pedestrian and motor transit. The architectural
value of the district has mostly faded since there are few houses which have not been re-
constructed so; the sense of neighboring has been affected by the load of newly constructed
apartments.
Generally, the physical attributes of this district have changed due to recent
developments. However, the majority of the district is still under residential use which has
sustained its former social conception. Moreover, urban planning and related policies tend
to maintain the green sites to mitigate the environmental influences of urbanism.
Topographic matters also, are a limiting factor for the construction development in this
district. Altogether, this district has relatively maintained its social role and function along
with its physical attributes. Therefore, it is considered as permanent urban space.
Ghasrodasht district:
Ghasrodasht is an extensive district which has been formed along the center-
northwest direction of Shiraz whereas the northern parts were mainly not constructed 40
years ago. Its popularity refers to vast fruit gardens and the pleasant climate. As a
consequence of demographic growth, a considerable area of the gardens were destroyed and
gradually replaced by building blocks. The central parts of this district are located in
downtown and have turned to retail and offices while the northern areas are less dense. In
fact, the residential areas have shifted to more northern sites; the outskirt gardens and grape
fields transformed to residential area. Nevertheless, regarding the actions, conceptions and
physical attributes the district has had a permanent role. Although the composition of the
district is expanded and demonstrates great transitions it constitutes a significant part of the
city’s image and identity.
Table 4: Recreational Urban Spaces in Shiraz
189
Zand Street, 2015:

Zand Street has had a significant transition in function and atmosphere. It is not used
for recreational function anymore. Although the number of shops has increased the presence
of several hospitals, private clinics, pharmacies and drugstores, universities and institutions
have remarkably altered its social role. Moreover, central banks, main governmental
organizations and offices have located there. The street has a crowded image with huge load
of vehicles and hasty pedestrians passing. Although the pace of modern life is undeniable
and developments are inevitable Zand Street has not experienced sustainable development
regarding its physical elements nor the social role rather, it lost its recreational
characteristics entirely. However, it is still one of the main streets and has a significant
situation in creating the urban identity of Shiraz. According to this study’s classification,
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Zand Street is counted as temporal urban space yet it is one the identical streets the city
known by.
Saadi, 2015:
Saadi tomb and his monument are nationally well-known as a landmark of Shiraz. The
area is still functioning properly as a recreational urban space; being the host for a variety
of actions and users of different ages and cultural backgrounds, reflecting the local culture
i.e. the extroverted and social character of inhabitants. Despite the local citizens and national
travellers international tourists are greatly interested in experiencing the space and its
atmosphere. Compared to 40 years ago, however, the physical attributes of the surrounding
environment has completely changed; the farmlands and gardens have been built for
residential use, connection roads have been widened and new boulevards and pavements
have been developed for ease of access by any means. Therefore, it can be concluded that the
significance of maintaining the physical structure of this landmark enhances the cultural
identity considering the sustainable development of the surrounding area in accordance.
Table 5: Commercial Urban Spaces in Shiraz
191
Vakil Bazaar, 2015:

Vakil Bazaar is the oldest trade center in Shiraz which has the historical reputation. It
has different sections selling carpets, rugs, handcrafts, cloths, textile, spices, etc. Its
traditional design is absolutely compatible with the region’s climate. The construction is
considered a historical and cultural asset due to its architecture, structure and the social role
as a ground for commercial interactions among citizens. In Iranian culture, grand bazaars
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have been the economic beat of the city and played a significant role in political movements
and social evolutions. What has been made the social interactions rather important was its
incorporation with the adjacent mosque. Today, however, the mosque is out of function and
mainly used for touristic matters.
Vakil Bazaar is a significant landmark of Shiraz and it is an inevitable part of the
cultural identity which reflects the local identity. In regards to the constant physical
attributes, expected actions and persistent conceptions this urban space is considered as
permanent.
Daryoosh Street, 2015:
As evidences indicate, Daryoosh Street has used to have a function of a commercial and
recreational complex in linear form of a street. However, the cinemas, cafes, pubs and
dancing clubs were closed during the Islamic revolution in 1979. Despite these functions, the
majority of shops and shopping centers have remained almost intact regarding the physical
attributes. Concerning the social role, however, the street does not have a recreational
character anymore. Rather, its luxurious shops and wide pavements have become the retail
center for electronic devices. The load of motor traffic has altered its peaceful characteristics
and transformed it to a busy and hectic path. In other words, it does not characterize the
cultural and local identity or represent a distinguishable attribute.
Therefore, it is considered as a temporal urban space which has retained its physical
characteristics and actions but has lost its social conception.
Table 6: Residential Urban Spaces in Yazd
Safaeieh District, 2015:

Yazd owns the most dense and monotone urban fabric composed of numerous
quarters. The center of each quarter was the aggregation point for special events such as
public mourning.
In the past, the majority of residents were in textile industry which was the main
export. Besides, the exports should have been transferred to Kerman and from there to
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India. By population increase, the city launched development along the most important
connection roads and new districts formed. The residents of historical context started
moving out of that in 1970. The newly migrated residents from the historical context mostly
tended to settle in developing districts such as Safaeieh and Imam-Shahr.
To date, the districts are still popular and have a residential function. However, the
residents return to their old quarters in order to hold the social customs and public
mourning during the specific months of the year. This demonstrates the significance of
permanent urban spaces in constructing the urban identity. Furthermore, this action
enhances the correlation of urban identity and the geographical area. Consequently,
Safaeieh and Imam-Shahr are introduced as permanent urban spaces with residential
function which fails in creating an appropriate and satisfying conception for the residents.
Table 7: Recreationl Urban Space in Yazd
Amir Chakhmaq, 2015:

Amir Chakhmaq square has been the unique center for social evolutions and political
movements of Yazd. The construction date goes back to 12th century. Although it has
experienced minor alteration in the structure and major modifications regarding the
surrounding area, the physical attributes has remained almost perfect over the centuries.
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This urban space has been extremely successful in terms of promoting the social interaction,
accommodating different uses and users and has become adapted to contemporary lifestyle.
The area is used for recreational activities, public mourning and special events. Its
uniqueness in type and structure has given it an extra conception as a brilliant landmark.
The most important commercial street of Yazd terminates by this square. It has a historical
reputation and registered as a national heritage. Therefore, it is considered as a permanent
recreational urban space which has kept its social characteristics as well as the physical
attributes.
Table 8: Commercial Urban Spaces in Yazd
195
Khan Bazaar, 2015:

Bazaar khan is a historical market and the oldest in Yazd. It has been the main trade
center for gold, textile, copper and other handcraft merchandises. According to the character
of grand bazaars and their importance in creating the social atmosphere of the cities, it has
been considered as a promoting arena for enhancing the interactions among the inhabitants.
Furthermore, its environmentally compatible design has made the construction a pleasant
place to stay and hangout. Similar to traditional bazaars in Iran, Khan Bazaar has a linear
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format, covered by continuous vaults and cupolas. It has architectural, structural and
historical values that have brought national reputation for the complex.
The construction contributes in forming the cultural and local identity with well-
maintained physical attributes and constant conceptions among the users and observers.
Therefore, it is a permanent urban space with commercial function according to this study’s
classification.
Qiyam Street, 2015:

Qiyam Street has inaugurated in 1943 to connect the two main squares of Yazd. Some
of the historical constructions were destroyed to make space for this street. Today, it is
known as one of the most crowded streets and trade centers for shopping, walking and social
interactions. It encompasses numerous historical constructions on its sides such as Panje
Ali Bazaar, Water Museum, old cisterns and Khan Bazaar. This path has a conjunction with
Amir Chakhmagh Square which was introduced previously.
Considering the physical attributes and the social role of this urban space it is classified
as permanent.
Conclusion
The life which occurs in an urban space becomes the culture. To have the sub-cultures
of a city alive will preserve the sense of locality. Accordingly, the local cultures will remain
within a town or city and will be passed to next generations, and form the urban identity.
The more urban spaces are in number the more related sub-cultures formed. Hence, a city
with more urban spaces and sub-cultures will have a more dominant urban identity.
Besides, over the process of globalization, maintaining the cultural identity of the cities,
which are extremely correlated to geographical area and the physical environment, play a
significant role in the sustainability of historical cities structure. Therefore, the durability
probability of the local and cultural identity depends on preserving the urban spaces and the
current sub-cultures.
Yet another attribute which enhances the survival probability of an urban space is
having the historical value or being adjacent to a landmark. Since the sites and constructions
of value attract local, national and international users, the local culture finds more chances
to be expressed and experienced. Moreover, the users’ conceptions will encompass the
ongoing actions and behavior of that space. Therefore, the composition of social and physical
characteristics creates a unique image of that urban space in user’s mind and forms the
identity of urban space. This research illustrated that all of the landmark urban spaces have
become permanent regarding the social role and physical attributes.
Temporal urban spaces that has lost their social role or physical characteristics over
the course of time still form an undeniable part of urban identity for the citizens. So, their
physical presence, even in architecturally manipulated situation or modified use, has a great
role in maintaining individuals’ identity. In fact, the sense of place survives through the
memorable urban spaces and protects the continuity of urban identity. This should not
distribute the wrong message that people make connections with history-related spaces
only. While sense of place plays a remarkable role in creating place identity, it takes time for
the residents to from a relationship with urban spaces. Temporal urban spaces for one
generation can become a permanent urban space for the following generations through
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structural, social or cultural transformation. Thus, temporal urban spaces should not be
overlooked regarding the urban identity formation. Similarly, the development of new urban
spaces and landmarks should be carefully taken into account since they can become
dominant urban spaces for the next generations. From this point of view, sustainable
development of urban spaces becomes even more important.
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IDENTITY: AN INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY OF CITTASLOW." Italian Journal
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199
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE 19TH CENTURY MILITARY BUILDINGS
İlke Aytar
Westernization of the Ottoman Empire in Architecture in the 19th Century
Westernization process was based on the European model that we call ‘West’. While the
initial conception of Westernization as being satisfied with Western technology, then was
necessarily mean adopting a consistent and transfer of all institutions of the West (Tekin,
2010:184). Ottoman Empire that could not allow parallel development with the Europe, has
started to experience major problems in policing, skilled personell, economy and especially
the army. Industry and class conflicts initiated by the French Revolution, XIX. century have
influenced the West to the East, and Europe has led to the emergence of new social ideas.
Meanwhile multinational Ottoman Empire has entered a process of changes in its own
structural confutions with the new ideas transmitted from the west.
XIX. century European goods entering the Ottoman world, has brought its own
aesthetic and artistic conception. The most quickly settled field of that effect has been art.
Especially, this effect became dominant position in decoration. The early sighting of the
effect of the europian archirecture and Baroque style which used in structural elements like
doors, windows and take a long time to pass the bulding design, shows that the interaction
of the Ottoman Architecture indicates that, carried out by small crafts.
Commercial activities for European merchants and the travelers who came to
Istanbul under the influence of Orientalism, caused population density in Istanbul. They
built brilliant Embassy buildings to their own architects in Pera and Galata, thereby the
activities organized in this buildings also played an active role in cultural exchange.
Westerners found in Ottoman lands for different reasons, also brought their own
understanding of life with them. In this sense, around Galata and Pera revealed a small scale
of the European lifestyle (Duymaz, 2003:43).
In the first period of Westernization in Ottoman architecture, especially Baroque style
was the dominant style in enrichment the building. Baroque style is considered a symbol of
an era in European architecture. In Ottoman architecture, Baroque find the name of the
application "Ottoman Baroque", especially in the capital works reflect a unıique stylistic
feature (Duymaz, 2003:74).
The beginning in shaping western style of Ottoman architecture with the
participation of foreign architects in the 18th century, continued until the end of the 19th
century. The architectural works built in Istanbul, the western architectural style elements
began to be seen intensively. During the 19th and 20th century, the spaces that were revealed
by the new lifestyle, such as banks, office buildings, theaters, shops, multi-storey houses and
hotels built by the foreign architects, brought back a variety revival – eclectisist style of
architecture. Among these styles, neo-classic, neo-gothic, art nouveau and eclectic are the
most applied styles.
Neo-Classical style of the embassy buildings in Pera intensively applied, are the best
examples of this style. These buildings that were built as large inside of the extensive gardens
in terms of landscape design, were built by the foreign architects such as Fossati, Smith.
200
Part 3 İlke Aytar The Architecture of the 19th Century…
The commercial structures such as office buildings and banks, located near Karakoy,
were built of stone and brick, multi-storey and classic details applied on facades (Duymaz,
2003:75). In the newly formed districts such as Nisantasi and Besiktas, wide streets that
intersects at right angles to each other and the multi storey residences with neo-classic
facades are seen. This kind of change in architecture when it’s considered in building, street
and neighborhood size, can be seen as a product of the reflection of the changes in social life.
Neo-gothic style is a style that revived by romantism coming out against Neo-Clasism
in England in 19th century. Neo-gothic style was applied mostly in civil and educational
architecture. Furthermore, some examples in the religious architecture in Istanbul are seen.
The English Church designed by E.J. Street, St. Stephen Bulgarian Church that built of cast
iron material brought from Vienna and built as prefabricated in1898 are some of the
examples of religious neo-gothic architecture. Neo-gothic style mostly apllied with the
Islamic and Ottoman details in the 19th century thus, it’s also called Ottoman neo-gothic
style.
Art-Nouveau style can be considered as a interim period between historicism and
modern movement. This style which the prevalence of is quite wide, integrated with the
interior design and furniture. Decorations are the essential component and also art-
nouveau is different from the other styles by its organic ornamentation approach and the
feeling of a unique and new form. Altough Art-Nouveau is a common architectural style in
II. Abdulhamid period, had lost its effectiveness after this period.
Eclectic style arised(reviewed) with the examples of the buildings those admitted of
two interpretations, certain stylistic features of west and the indian, Islamic and Far-east
styles. In fact, this style incorporates more eastern and understanding of Islamic origin. The
monumental and residential architecture has intensive use (Duymaz., A. Ş., 2003:76).
The architects whom designed Neo-clasic, Neo-gothic, Art-nouveau- Eclectisim in
Ottoman Empire, have been on a quest for a synthesis. For the European clients, the
architects designed exactly the same characteristics of the sytle of the designed similar in
west (Europe). This architectural style lasted until the final years of the Ottoman Empire in
the 1920s and continues to the understanding of the emergence of national architectural
concept
The Ottoman Military was very much involved in the modernization of the Empire,
acting as a pioneer, taking a role that is well beyond its defined responsibilities (Aytar,
2016:24). At times, it acted as the sole agency of advancement and modernity, which was
not very unorthodox given the political terrain of the Western World at the time. The
advancements were not restricted to the militaristic affairs such as the tactical, logistical or
planning layouts but it also gave rise to the modernization of the architecture, declares
Tanyeli in his work (Tanyeli,1995:38). There are two main dimensions to such contribution
by the Military. The first is the application of functional forms rather than perfected and
idealistic geometries of the past. And the second dimension to this was a new determination
to the control over nature, later manifested in the use of topography and landscape. Given
these, Tanyeli was much in favor of defining such transformations as Modernization rather
than Westernization.
Barrack Building Architecture in the 19th Century
The architectural reflection of the modernization movement after the last quarter of
201
the 18th century can be read from the barracks that are the landmarks of that period.
Altought there are very few example of barracks are built of wood, the majority of them are
built of stone and brick. Barracks are usually built inside of large gardens designed with a
central courtyard and located outside the center of city. Mostly composed of ground and first
floor. According to the slope on the ground in some parts of the land, two or three-storey
barracks can be seen. Considering the barracks built in Istranbul in the 18th and 19th century,
were built two or three-storey ward building with rectangular courtyard plan scheme. After
the abolition of the Janisseries in 1826 II. Mahmud period, the barracks that were built at
previous periods, also used after restorated.
There are no specifications for the construction of barracks in the 19 th Century up to
the researches. In 19th century constructed barracks were built according to technical
specifications (Aytar, 2016:76). In addition to defined general barrack typologies there are
also examples of different plans. The barracks are designed with wards, mosques, kitchen,
Turkish baths, barns and also the summer palaces for the Sultan. In this sense, barrack is
not only a place for military housing also carries the characteristics of a multi-functional
complex.
The most preminant of the façade characteristics of the 19th century’s barracks that
the order and control is well to the fore, the entrance part is monumental and highlighted.
The movement of the façade characterized itself with the jutting out the entrance part of the
barrack. In spite of aesthetic is a secondary factor in designing, symmetry is dominant. Main
door differs from others of being larger.
The shapes and the openings of the windows of barracks seems like whole. It’s also
possible to see different shapes of window for every storey bu also the same window shapes
on the same storey. The windows are vertically rectangle and masonry framed. The facades
are divided horizontally with moldings and vertically with plasters. Main entrance openings
can be emphasized with keystones. When the plans analysed, there are rooms on the garden
side arranged in an order, along the long corridors, are seen. The long corridors looks to
courtyard and generally ligthened with the symmetric windows. The rooms are designed
paying attention to that windows not to break the symmetry.
Mostly as building material face stone and rubble stone are used with brick. It’s
possible to see different style of stone-brick arrays in masonry buildings. Wood material is
seen at windows, doors, roofs and floors.
The Barracks Bui̇lt in Abdulazi̇z Peri̇od (1860-1876)
Based on the research, there are 78 constructed building are identified during the
Abdulaziz period. 11 of them are barrack structures. 5 of them could have conserved until
today.
Table1: The barracks built in Abdulaziz Period (Aytar, 2016:82)
TY YE NAME OF LOCATI CONDIT
PE OF AR OF BUILDING ON ION
BUILDIN CONST
G R.
BA 18 SAMSUN SAMSUN DEMOLI
RRACK 63 BARRACK SHED
BA 18 YENIPAZAR SERBIA DEMOLI
202

BA 18 SILISTRE BULGAR DEMOLI
RRACK 70 BARRACK IA SHED
BA 18 YANYA GREECE DEMOLI
BA 18 DIYARBAKIR DIYARB EXISTIN
RRACK 72 BARRACK AKIR G
BA 18 DEBRE MACEDO DEMOLI
RRACK 73 BARRACK NIA SHED
BA 18 TIRHALA GREECE DEMOLI
BA 18 CIMENLIK CANAKK EXISTIN
RRACK 70 BARRACK ALE G
BA 18 HARBIYE EDIRNE EXISTIN
RRACK 72 BARRACK G
BA 18 SIVRIHISAR ESKISEH EXISTIN
RRACK 68 BARRACK IR G
BA 18 GUMUSSUYU ISTANB EXISTIN
RRACK 62 BARRACK UL G
Gümüşsuyu Barrack;
The barrack is located next to the building that was used as a military hospital in
Istanbul, Street Gumussuyu. At 1850’s the barrack began to be built for the people of Music-
i Humayun and Hademe-I Hassa, but the construction could be finalized at Abdulaziz
period, in 1862. The architect of the barrack is Sarkis Balyan.
The only original element that could be conservated until today is the curved staircase
designed in the baroque style on the sea front to reach the main entrance.
The building of Istanbul Technical Universty in Halıcıogluad interim moved the
Gumussuyu Barrack because of the British military invasion. After the World War I, the
school has completely moved to barrack. The building, first designed as barrack, has been
preserving the school function since 1920
Photograph 1: Gümüşsuyu Barrack (İ.T.Ü. archive)
203
Photograph 2: The Courtyard of Gumussuyu Barrack (İ.T.Ü. archive)
Photograph 3: The Tower part of the Barrack (İ.T.Ü. archive)
Photograph 4: The Entrance of the Barrack (İ.T.Ü. archive)
204
Photograph 5: The Gumussuyu Barrack today, Istanbul Technical University, The

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (İ.T.Ü. archive)
Samsun Barrack;
According to documents in the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry, barrack
building is finished in 1863 (BOA., İ.MVL., 499/22568, 1 Ca 1280/14 October 1863). The
construction of the barrack was completed by ‘The Headworker, Georgios’.
The barrack that had a typical planning, consist of officer rooms, wards, kitchen and
mosque. On the documents written by the headworker Gerogios, it’s possible to read the
informations of building (BOA., İ.MVL., 499/22568, 17 Ca 1280/30 October 1863). The
deadline of the construction is specified as, a month after the date of this document (Yazıcı,
2011:5). There is also information about the structure of the hospital is to be built right next
to the barrack, on the document. Both buildings have not conservated.
Figure 1: The plan of the Samsun Barrack (Yazıcı, 2011:7)
Figure 2 : The plan of the Samsun Barrack and the Hospital (Yazıcı, 2011:7)
Yeni Pazar Barrack;
205
The barrack is completed at March of 1968. There is information about a military

barrack built in Yeni Pazar small town at the book published by Presidency of General Staff.
Due to there can’t be found any other information about the barrack the certain location of
the Yeni Pazar small town is unknown. Trough the research, there are two smalltowns are
found by the name of Yeni Pazar. One is on Nazilli, Aydın land in Turkiye and the other one
is on the Serbia land. When the research is limited with aydın, there can’t be found any
barrack building completed at Abdulaziz period. There is an information on a document
found at Prime Minister Ottoman Archives, written to Bosnia Command that is about a need
of a technical repair for the barn on the ground floor because of the water leak at the Yeni
Pazar Barrack. There is no date written on the document. However, the information of the
relevant commander is in Bosnia, gives us the idea of the barrack is located at Balkans.
Sivrihisar Barrack;
The barrack is located in Sivrihisar, Eskişehir and the construction is completed at
1968. During world War I, it’s known that the building is in use of soldiers. While fleeing
from Anatolia, was burned by Greeks. Today barrack is not in use and dilapidated.
Photogragh 6: Eskişehir Sivrihisar Barrack (Yıldırım and Tekkollu, 2001:229)
Figure 3: Façade drawing of the barrack (Yıldırım ve Tekkollu, 2001:230)
Silistre Barrack;
The barrack is located in Bulgaria and the construction is completed at 1970. Sofia
Municipality with the excuse of widening of the streets, destroyed several Ottoman buildings
with the help of the judicial authorities (Koyuncu, 2009:199). That can be a reason of the
demolishment of the barrack.
Yanya Barrack;
The barrack is located in Greece and the construction is completed at 1870. The
barrack couldn’t be conservated but the reason and the date can not be found at archieves.
There is an information on a document found at Prime Minister Ottoman Archives, written
at 9 January 1912. The information is about a suspicious disease and the barrack should be
206
immediately kept in quarantine. This document shows us the existence of Yanya barracks.
Edirne Barrack;
The barrack is located in Mimar Sinan Street, Edirne and built at 1871-1872. Today
the barrack is in use of Architectural Faculty of Trakya University.
Figure 4: Edirne Barrack (Edirne Directorate of Cultural Heritage Conservation

District Board archive)
Photograph 7: Edirne Barrack,1930’s (Directorate of Cultural Heritage Conservation

District Board archive)
Photograph 8: Edirne Barrack, 2015 (İlke Aytar archive)

Diyarbakır Kurdoğlu Barrack;
The barrack is located in Diyarbakır and the construction is completed at April ,1872.
Today the building is in use of Turkish Military. The complex consist of barrack, mosque and
the government house.
Photograph 9: Kurdoğlu Barrack (Soyukaya, N. and others, 2009:288)
207
Figure 5: Kurdoğlu Barrack (Yıldırım and Tekkollu, 2001:142)
Photograph 10: Kurdoğlu Barrack (Yıldırım and Tekkollu, 2001:141)

Debre Barrack;
The barrack is located in Debre, Macedonia and the construction is completed at
March, 1873. The barrack couldn’t be conservated but the reason and the date can not be
found at archieves. There is an information on a document found at Prime Minister Ottoman
Archives, about the total price of a barrack and a government house. This document shows
us the existence of Debre Barrack.
Tırhala Barrack;
The barrack is located in Tırhala, Greece and the construction is completed at August,
1873. The barrack couldn’t be conservated and demolished.
Çimenlik Barrack;
The barrack is located in Çanakkale and construction is completed at 1870. It’s known
that the barrack had been used for the staff of the headquarter after the construction of the
Çimenlik redoubt. There are some information found in the Prime Minister’s Ottoman
Archieves. One was written at 21 March 1888, about the renewal of the windows of the
barrack. The other one was written at 1920, giving the informations about the barrack was
in the occupation of the British Military. The last one was written at 4 March 1920, informing
that there was a fire just a few days ago before the telegram was sent.
Photograph 11: Çimenlik Barrack next to the Çimenlik Castle [URL1, 2015]
208
Figure 6: Çimenlik Barrack next to the Çimenlik Castle (Çanakkale Directorate of

Cultural Heritage Conservation District Board, 1981)
Photograph 12: Çimenlik Barrack (Çanakkale Directorate of Cultural Heritage

Conservation District Board, 1976)
Photograph 13: North Façade of the Çimenlik Barrack (Çanakkale Directorate of

Cultural Heritage Conservation District Board, 1986)
Photograph 14: Main Entrance of the Çimenlik Barrack,2012 (Erdem Salcan Archive)
Photograph 15: South Façade of the Çimenlik Barrack, 2015 (İlke Aytar Archive)
209
The Method of the Typologie Study of the Barracks
There are three main topics of the typologie study of the barracks that were built in
Abdülaziz period. First topic is plenum-space. Insıde of this topic, there are three sub-titles;
the editing of the planning, the edittng of the façade and the percentage of the spaces on the
façades. Second topic is the system of the construction. This topic is analysed in two sub-
titles; the traditional systems and the new construction of the period. The third topic is the
solutions that builts up the construction system. In the third topic, the development of the
brick, forms and measurements of the brick and where they were used, are studied. All of
the datas are defined to find out the general proporties of the barracks of the Abdulaziz
Period.
CONCLUSION
First the westernization of the 19th century’s Ottoman Empire and the architectural
reflection of this westernization is analysed for the paper, before the barrack architecture of
the period. According to the datas, it can be said that the westernization first appears in
technic and system of educaton and military and for this reason, westernization can be read
on the military and educational architecture.
As many similarities, was found that each construction was unique in some detail.
Accessed data to determine details arising from the construction technique and the
historical development of production technology are also evaluated. There are some
common data found among the five barracks that are in different cities ;
• The barracks have L, U and lineer plannings even so, additional
structures may be added in need of new requirements to the barracks,  
Figure 7: Plan types of the barracks and the additional buildings (Aytar,
2016:116)
• Main entraces that are ascended from the ground,  
• Main entrances are raised with the carried colomns
• Raised corner stones in every edge of the façade of the building,
 Towers, built higher at the edge of the buildings,
 Flat arch and semicircular arch windows,
 Hipped and pantile roof, 
 Masonry construction technique,  
 Stone or brick fillings inside the wooden interior walls ,
210
Photograph 16: Interior walls (İlke Aytar Archive)
 Stone and brick bond technique,
Figure 8: Stone and Brick technique (Aytar, İ.,2016:246)

 Fixing with metal clamps to the body wall of the window lintel
Photograph 17: Metal clamps (İlke Aytar Archive)

 Neo-classical style of the buildings,  
211
Photograph 18: Elevations of the Abdulaziz barracks (Aytar, İ., 2016)

 Use of industrial brick ,
Figure 9 :  The measurements of the bricks (Aytar, İ., 2016)

 Flattened jambs are used at the windows of the back façade, flat arch,
semicircular arch and rosettes are used at the windows of the front façades
Table 2: The ratio of the windows  (Aytar, İ., 2016:130)
212
 Plastered façades and eaves .(Photograph 18)

Table 3: The Front elevations of the Barracks of Abdülaziz Period (Aytar, İ.,
2016:120)
In this study, barracks of Abdulaziz period, structures, architectural and technical

features and common characteristics examined were investigated in detail.
Among the aims of the study, to analyse the structure of the original identity and to
help a preliminary study for a possible restoration work done in the future is determined. Be
transferred the future generations of cultural and historical structures conservation
awareness should be purposed for the one who study of this scope is to do.
References
1. Aytar, İ., 2016, ‘Sultan Abdulaziz Dönemi Kışla Yapılarının Çanakkale Çimenlik
Kışlası Örneğinde Korunmasına Yönelik Bir Yöntem Önerisi’, Mimar Sinan
Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü Mimarlık Anabilim Dalı Restorasyon- Koruma
Yenileme Programında hazırlanan Doktora tezi, İstanbul.
2. Duymaz., A. Ş., 2003, II. Abdülhamid Dönemi İmar Faaliyetleri (Türkiye Örnekleri),
Basılmamış Doktora Tezi, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü,
Tarih Ana Bilim Dalı, Isparta.
3. Koyuncu, A., 2009, ‘Bulgaristan’da Osmanlı Maddi Kültür Mirasının Tasfiyesi (1878-
1908)’, OTAM (Ankara Ün. Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi),
Sayı:20, ss:197-243, Ankara.
4. Soyukaya, N.; Alpay, E.; Kaya, F.; Hanar, E.; Yumruk, Ş.; Han, Z.; Balsak, O., 2009,
T.C. Diyarbakır Valiliği İl Kültür ve Turizm Müdürlüğü, Müze Müdürlüğü,
Diyarbakır.
5. Tanyeli, U., 1995, ‘Türkiye’de Modernleşmenin Unutulmuş Tanıkları: Askeri
Mimarlık Elkitapları’, Mimarlık Dergisi S:263 ss:38-42, İstanbul.
6. Tekin, B.,B., 2010, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’in İngiltere (Londra) Ziyareti Hatıra Madalyası:
213
19.Yüzyılda Batı-Doğu Kimlik Algılayışının Görsel Bir Özeti’, 10-13 Mayıs 2010
tarihinde Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi’nde düzenlenen Sanatta Kimlik ve Etkileşim
Uluslararası Sempozyumu’nda sunulan bildiri, İstanbul.
7. Yazıcı, N., 2011, ‘Osmanlı Dönemi Kışla Mimarisi ve Samsun Kışlası’, 13-16 Ekim
Samsun Sempozyumu, Samsun.
8. Yetkin, S., 2003, Ege’de Eşkiyalar, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, İstanbul. 
9. Yıldırım, N., Tekkollu, L., 2001, Yaşayan Tarihi ve Kültürel Yapılar, Milli Savunma
Bakanlığı, Ankara.
10. İnternet Sources

11. Url1: Çimenlik Barrack next to the Çimenlik Castle , available at;
12. www.googleearth.com , (date of access 2016)
214
VIEWS ON SUSTAINABILITY IN BUILT ENVIRONMENT UNDERGOING FAST
URBANIZATION PROCESSES
Melek Elif Somer
Changes in the Built Environment and Building Add-Ons
Continuity in life mainly depends on the ability to change and adapt to shifting
conditions and the subsequent undertakings to support it. In the early ages, in its search for
solutions to fulfil their needs, humankind came up with initial i n t e r v e n t i o n s in their
surroundings and started a path which would lead to gradual transformations in their
habitats.
Some of those early interventions and adaptations were taming75 of animals for work
and food, the establishment of monoculture zones and the creation of built environment.
Today such interventions to the environment still exist. Besides, in order to adapt to the
changing conditions in urban areas, there is also a need to revise the built environment
(Şişman, Kibaroğlu 2009: 2). These revisions can be listed according to international
literature as: urban rehabilitation, urban revitalisation, urban preservation, urban
conservation, infill development, urban refurbishment, re-urbanisation, urban
strengthening etc. (Akkar 2006: 34)
In any of these cases b u i l d i n g a d d - o n s may be a means of intervention
throughout the revision of built environment. They can occur in various scales and resist
time and nature, meaning they may remain unless decided to be removed. That’s why,
regardless of their size and scale, the more they are used, the more they have the ability to
transform the entire structure, the existing built environment and influence our future. They
act as the cornerstones of a transformative path that happens to be irreversible.
Proportional size, function, materials used, visual features and the relationship with
the existing structures are the main elements that determine the relative status of the
building add-ons depending on where they are added. These elements may also be
considered as tools establishing control over the integration into the urban fabric.
Add-Ons and Their Visibility
In the Official Turkish Dictionary, a building add-on76 both represents the missing
part and, with a relatively negative indication, the part that is visible and highly apparent for
being added later. This kind of visibility is a much unasked result in many cases during urban
rehabilitation activities.
75 Bollongino R. et.al., 2012, “Modern Taurine Cattle Descended from Small Number of Near-Eastern Founders”,
Molecular Biology and Evolution March 14, available at
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/29/9/2101/1077727/Modern-Taurine-Cattle-Descended-from-Small-Number
[date of access: 30.08.2017]
76 In the Official Turkish Dictionary, the word a d d - o n is defined as “The piece that is added to a thing or an entity with
a missing part in order to complete it” while also being used for “The part of a whole that is added, manufactured, sewed
or glued and thus visible from the outside”.
215
Part 3 Melek Elif Somer Views on Sustainability…
The real distortion caused by add-ons does not come through their visibility but
through the aesthetic and socio-cultural harm they do to the environments where they are
located. Since s u s t a i n a b l e systems are established as balanced and designed in a way that
can offer c o n t i n u i t y in time, it is of utmost importance to create a unique urban character,
which allows for the visibility of the traces of the past and for a sustaining identity (Özden
2005: 18, BMVBS 2013: 3.3.1). In order to preserve the identity of the environment, building
add-ons should be designed -after much thought and questioning- in a way that will
maintain the story depicted by the u r b a n fabric (see image 1).
Image 1 In some neighbourhoods, despite the low quality of building stock, one of the
reasons for their appeal is the visibility of the traces of the past –namely the structure
depending on -traditional and historical- small plots (E. Somer Archive- Cihangir 2014).
Evolution of Shaping the Built Environment
The built environment has been a result of a natural and relatively slow process and
shaped through the vital needs of the society as Habraken mentions: “For thousands of
years, built environments [...] arose informally and endured (Habraken 1998: prologue)”.
The architectural production during this process was considered as sufficient until the time
it was questioned critically in many ways:
Originally the question of a design method concerned the generation of form [...]
was the claim that the forms off historical architecture no longer corresponded to
the spirit of the age: the old styles had degenerated into a [...] masquerade that
hampered the creativity of architects, [...] and failed to meet the challenges of the
new social and technological conditions (Jormakka 2010: 9).
The social and economic factors created some changes during and after the Industrial
Revolution, starting mainly in the wake of the 19th century. This situation led to a shift in the
balance and speed of urban development. Following the discerning of the indispensability
of long term and professional planning, the concerns regarding the built environment then
became responsibility of only the professionals and specialists in the field. Also recorded by
Habraken:
216
[...], however, professional intervention has extended to encompass [...] buildings

[...]. What used to remain unquestioned has been taken up as a design problem to
be solved: [...] Ordinary growth processes that had been innate and self-sustaining,
shared throughout the society, have been recast as problems requiring professional
solution [...]. This radical shift in roles has become irreversible (Habraken 1998:
prologue).
Yet today, the professional approaches of experts in the field of planning and design
are challenged by newly-emerging requirements. Moreover, planning and implementation
processes do not seem to be catching up with the pace of development caused by the massive
urbanization, migration and rapid increase of world population. By time, while the society
is gradually losing sense of possession and territorial belonging it is also losing its
competence and authority to question and realize its problems as well as create its own
solutions. It became a diligent and fairly difficult task to apply long term planning solutions
regarding the handling of built environment in the most harmless way possible in order to
protect the living-quality and identity. The recent situation can be described as follows: “Its
inhabitants cannot own the city they live in. They are just visitors to an area that is,
fundamentally, not a part of them. In order to identify with their environment, they have to
transform themselves. There is no other way77 (Habraken 1961: 13)”.
Consequently, the capital tends to shape the culture of construction in a way that fits
free market economy (Koca 2015: 33). As a result of this, the building production and the
building itself have become the object of consumption, investment and speculation while its
cultural content and architectural quality have become short term entities, lacking any
diversity as Habraken mentioned decades ago in another case of construction manner as:
“…the …construction reduces the home to a consumer product and the inhabitant to a
consumer (Habraken 1961: 12)”.
Application of such approaches as a general (standard) approach can bear
detrimental effects78.
Progressively, the idea of housing is being transformed from defining an essential

part of an individual’s identity and, consequently, strengthening his idea of
belonging to a place to a simple financial asset with no definitive owner, [...] ready
to be transacted upon commercially, thereby reducing it to a mere investment
property, [...] decoupled from defining the civic culture, architectural and
production values of the population (Koca 2015:19).
The future functionality of such a building production seems quite uncertain. The
decisive results of the issues argued above are the loss of architectural quality in the building
stock and the disruption of the surrounding environment on a larger scale. These results,
which are now commonplace in areas with rapid urban transformation, make it necessary
to take preventive measures in order to create cities with an increased quality-of-life and
future identity, such as proper supervision of demolition and rebuilding activities,
77 All texts (Habraken 1961) are translated from German by the author (Somer) giving the general sense.
78 All texts (Koca 2015) are translated from Turkish by the author (Somer) giving the general sense.
217
diversification of techniques and processes employed, and the avoidance of monotony and
imitations in existing environments.
Current Tendencies in Building Industry on the Issue of Sustainability
In general, the main definition of sustainability is grounded on three pillars (Stevens

2005:1). This definition points to the issues of e c o l o g i c a l , e c o n o m i c and s o c i a l
imbalance that indicates problems related to sustainability in general.
The key necessity for a sustainable development is the expectations regarding the
integration of particular phenomena to the existing structures; in other word, changing
perspectives and consumption habits as well as innovations. Besides, it is also necessary to
assess whether or not these changes will maintain their long term functionality in the
expression of Habraken:
The fundamental issue [...] is: How will this [...] thing (the building) last through
time? How will it renew itself? How should it be constructed so that it doesn’t fall
apart and crumble? How can new inventions and alternative concepts be
incorporated into the existing structures? [...] It is rather simple, to build a city.
However, the key question still remains: How should it be built, in order to stand
the test of time? (Habraken 1961: 25-26).
When sustainability is in question in the field of building industry, along with the
three pillars of sustainability socio-cultural, technical and process-based qualities are
additionally defined (BMVBS 2013: 20).
From the socio-cultural perspective, each factor concerning the building and the way
it is constructed is evaluated in terms of society’s needs, its cultural values and the
permanence of these values (Galinski 2013:1). In essence, f u n c t i o n a l i t y , h e a l t h ,
s e c u r i t y and c o m f o r t are the end products of sustainability in the socio-cultural sense
but also the quality of c o n s t r u c t i o n - d e s i g n 79 (Galinski 2013:1), which may influence the
identification with the urban surrounding.
In order to respond to these needs, there is a strong necessity to develop and use new
building technologies in general but also especially for areas in fast urban development
processes. The constructive measures taken in order to achieve a sustainable industry are
mainly shaped around three items: t e c h n o l o g y , u s e o f m a t e r i a l s and d e s i g n . In
construction sector, the tendency is to create solutions based on these items.
As for the sustainability of building technologies, it is important to implement
systems that are both applicable and usable in the long run without ignoring the socio-
cultural tendencies. On the other hand, the ideas for sustainability in construction
p r o c e s s e s concentrate on d i s m a n t l i n g of structures (IMSAD 2001:12-14).
In many countries, criteria for architectural design (ex. flexible and adaptable spaces
and multipurpose usage possibilities) are also included in sustainability studies, since user
needs and building functions can change very quickly (BMVBS 2013: 3.3.1). These studies
involve architectural criteria as well as criteria for the design of building components that
are suitable for expansion and transformation. All these features are attained in the building
79 Gestaltungsqualität (Translated from German).

218
systems that offer adaptation, renewability, easy maintenance and assembly as well as
dismantling serving changeability and t e m p o r a r i n e s s (Aichholzer 1999: B2- B4, DPT
2001: 95).
The Loss of Architectural Quality in the Urban Fabric
There are many mechanisms that manage and aim at controlling the transformations in
the historical and protected natural environments. The issue of new add-ons is discussed in
the academic field mainly in terms of their relations to these environments (Ahunbay 1996:
22-36). In order to deem necessary an extensive discussion of the location of the add-ons,
being historically recognized or being a part of the nature are regarded as prerequisites. Yet,
there are many critical architectural sites beyond those academic descriptions and
categorisations (Özden 2005: 18) especially in areas under the pressure of fast urbanisation.
The fundamental question is not how to protect and preserve the old, but how the
“new” should be created. The city should be viewed as the representation of the
cultural identity of its people, independent of the different political views governing
development and preservation issues (Özaslan 1996: 34)80.
Any object, urban setting or site that had an impact on the memory of the society or
the individual throughout its life or development requires careful intervention. But like in
the case of Turkey, there are some defective urban renovation methods causing problems.
Demolishing and rebuilding as a method for urban renovations:

In the case of rapid building processes, the most common approach is to demolish the
existing structure and to rebuild. In some cases, transitions of urban fabric may happen
approximately every 20-30 years. However, it is really much crucial to preserve the
authentic identity of any urban fabric to maintain its continuity in order to serve the socio-
cultural sustainability during such periods.
Monotony by repet ition of new add-ons:

There are some dynamics which do seek improvement and control over the additional
structures but generate controversial results. For instance, in order to preserve regional or
local uniformity, geometrical constraints, and restrictions over the use of colour, shapes
etc. are widely used in various areas (see Image 2). Even if the end product -namely building
add-ons- are high quality, the above mentioned constraints could cause monotony through
repetition caused by limitations (see Image 3).
80 All texts (Özaslan 1996) are translated from Turkish by the author (Somer) giving the general sense.
219
Image 2 The initial idea of adding new white elevations to the traditional (Bodrum-Turkey)
fabric is appropriate. Yet, an overall re-assessment of this idea regarding the long run should
be put into place given the current look of the city, which now resembles a massive white
wall (E. Somer Archive).
Image 3 The use of ridge roofs on the near silhouette of Bosphorus is mandatory. It is a
principle which causes repetition in architecture but could not stop the negative
transformation of the sight because of the buildings far behind (E. Somer archive).
Imitatio n of local references:

Another problematic result can be caused by the misinterpretation or careless
implementation of codes regarding the preservation of unique urban fabric. Methodologies
like the use of materials and forms that are widely spread over a site in order to recreate
existing styles, namely the stylist ic imitation , and the mimicking of traditional
architecture by reapplying local references (Zeren 2010: 65-66) can often be functional,
unless they are used for purposes beyond simple restoration which would then result in
imitations. Such problematic cases usually occur when the references are applied randomly
or without a cultural or functional foundation. These adaptations mainly focus on the
external characteristics of buildings81 disregarding the interpretation of original materials
and technologies (Karatosun 2010: 32-35) and the visibility of the urban fabric is
suppressed. These ‘supposedly’ coherent approaches cause the majority of disruptions in the
urban fabric (see Image 4).
81 Architectural elements like mouldings, canopies, ornaments, façade openings, etc.

220
Image 4 The heavy repetition and the imitation of traditional forms caused the loss of its
visual authenticity; In Nessebar, Bulgaria, new concrete additions are made into the existing
fabric. The façades are later covered with wood (E. Somer Archive).
Use of conventional materials and shapes:

With the use of local materials, for those were the only available components at the time,
and the use of traditional building technologies, the architectural culture and the building
activity had progressed in harmony without any substantial planning for long periods. Main
advancements took place in material use and building techniques causing the building stock
to be developed in coherence with the surrounding environment and to abide by the
established rules. For that reason, it is very typical and natural to see repetitive use of
building materials and techniques in a given local area. Unlike the contemporary
approaches, this self-supporting development becomes a sustainable form of intervention
and a process providing opportunities to change and gradually became flawless. On the other
hand, it is very rare to see locality of materials and decency in today’s building productions:
“[...] culture being the dominant factor of the civic character of a city during pre-industrial
era, with technology gradually replacing it during the industrial age (Özaslan 1996:35)”.
As a result of the building industry’s aim on sole profit, the building production
largely utilizes common technologies, materials and forms (see Image 5). That results in the
loss of architectural diversity, lack of urban identity, and formation of the e x t r e m e
s i t u a t i o n in Habraken’s sense, based on the creation of identical cities.
If, in a state of equilibrium, one of the contributing forces stops contributing, then
the interaction amongst the remaining is disrupted. In this case, a new equilibrium
is needed and justified. Otherwise, the balance is lost and the remaining forces push
the entire system to an extreme and unstable state. (Habraken 1961: 17).
221
Image 5 Left: A new construction in Istanbul, added to the existing fabric mimicking
surrounding façade styles; Right: Demolition of the building stock from 19.th century and
rebuilding with conventional materials and architecture (E. Somer Archive).
Solution-Oriented Design Approaches for Rapid Building Activity
In summary, demolishing and rebuilding as a method for urban renovations, the

monotony by repetition of new add-ons, imitation of local references and the use of common
materials and forms all create an e x t r e m e s i t u a t i o n that causes the loss of quality in the
urban fabric and the authentic architectural identity.
This can be dealt with the sustainable advancements in the fields of design, material
and architectural technology, and via the establishment and use of effective processes82,
created for collecting and evaluating specific attributes of a place and relying on
sound aesthetic and technological design criteria. These processes can be helpful
in making decisions about the features of add-ons, such as selecting a certain
character through underemphasising or featuring, matching or contrasting, contemporary
or traditional elements, and an approach to dealing with time through temporariness or
flexibility for a more sustainable design and architecture.
Effective mechanisms for defining aesthetical and technological

criteria:
Some well-intentioned interventions and used elements targeting control may
sometimes also turn out to create unintended consequences, which make it crucial to offer
encompassing and coherent definitions of criteria that will assess and determine the
outcomes of these interventions. To prevent the results of insufficient definitions, which may
lead to loss of quality in the urban fabric new effective mechanisms, are necessary.
Regarding the cities, the central approach should be the preservation of the existing
fabric, rather than demolishing and rebuilding it. Site biddings in urban areas should
initially be focusing on existing empty lots other than public and recreational areas. In cases
of insufficient lots for bidding inside the city, new areas should be sought on the periphery
zones. For the case of rebuilding, architectural characteristics of the existing building(s) and
the new building addition(s) should be defined carefully. For any building activity in any
urban fabric that will undergo renewal or transformation processes –even for a single
82 Digital and manual Processes (Somer).

222
ordinary building– control mechanisms should strictly be put into use. Moreover, the
decision making processes pertaining to visual and technological aspects should be freed
from the influence of existing monopolies (see Image 6).
These mechanisms should operate with high sensitivity, examining exceptional
situations to avoid monotony by repetition, imitations and the loss of authentic identity.
In order to attain a long-term authenticity in the urban fabric, where the
characteristics of the new additions are highly operative, the esthetical criteria need to be
defined carefully and in a way that promotes visual diversity. Due to such implications,
architectural design will regain its importance paving the way for architectural authenticity
and freedom in design. So, a comprehensive and long-term control over urbanisation can be
achieved where the additions consolidate the physical quality of the urban fabric undergoing
transformation.
Image 6 The E3, in Berlin, is a building with timber components which required special
permissions. The proportional qualities of the façade does not necessarily mimick the
neighboring buildings but the new design does not disrupt the overall view of the street
(Kaden & Klingbeil Architecture).
The balance between underemphasising and featuring:

The approaches and concepts regarding the building additions in historical fabric can be
addressed parallel to setting new criteria for an original and sustainable fabric today (Zeren
2010: 65-66). These concepts may define the character of new additions such as the balance
between building’s underemphasise or featuring. The r e s p e c t f u l a p p r o a c h , modern and
minimalistic design remaining on the background (see Image 7) and the c o n t r a s t i n g
a p p r o a c h where the new design is pretty much independent from the surrounding scenery
(see Image 7) and works as a contrasting visual piece, are quite appropriate methods in
interpreting urban formation processes. Respectful or matching approaches operate in a
consolidating way for the existing visual character while the Contrasting Approach
emphasises itself and the other through creating visual contrast. In the latter approach, the
degree of differentiation between the building add-on and its environment may sometimes
be characterized by heavy interventions83; however, this does not necessarily mean
disruption of the fabric (see Image 8). To avoid any negative repercussions, the proportions
83 The volumetric differentiation should be examined carefully. Exaggerated volumes should be avoided unless
necessary.
223
of interventional solutions should respect the existing fabric and their quantity should not
exceed that of the surrounding fabric.
Image 7 Left: An example of the Respectful Approach from Germany (Karn Architekten
Mainz); Right: Gas towers built in the 1900s have been renovated for new functions in a
contrasting approach. Holzbauer, Wehdorn, Coop Himmelblau, Jean Nouvel 2001 (A.Y.
Somer Archive).
Image 8 The entrance of the Documentation Centre in Nuremberg. Despite the dramatic
architecture, the whole addition is minimal compared to the existing structure. Günther
Domenig 2001 (E. Somer Archive).
Integration of Matching-Contrasting Elements and Contemporary

Additions:
Different approaches explained above might provide us a critical documentation of the
visibility of transformations for a given site regarding the time dimension. As stated earlier,
a challenging addition may still be in harmony with its surroundings.
The level of matching and contrasting elements of the design both defines the
remaining past references and the site’s future identity. And such elements can be applied
in numerous levels in the design work. Rather than repetition and copying, creation of strong
contrasts might be much effective concerning the visibility of the past. In relation to this, the
criteria for contrasting elements should carefully be studied and used alongside the design
and application phases of matching design criteria. And the new design -in traditional,
historical, urban etc. fabric- may offer an appropriate level of contrast which is strictly
different from incoherence (see Images 9).
224
Image 9 Left: The transparent façade of the design reflects the historical construction.
Right: New Museum Nuremberg, Volker Staab 1999 (E. Somer Archive); the building
located in a rural area is designed in a way that reflects its natural surroundings. Casa
Invisible, Delugan Meissl Associated Architects 2013 (Christian Brandstätter).
Temporariness and Flexibility:

Contemporary additions heavily take shape according to existing building codes, technology,
building materials, current trends and tastes in design. And all these aspects are changing
over time. For this reason, in the cases of rapid developments, it is rather difficult to address
the legacy of a new design in the long term.
Since the lifecycle of a building heavily depends on various development stages, the
balance between t e m p o r a r i n e s s and p e r m a n e n c e is vital on sites with rapid building
activity (Somer 2013: 78-83).
In order for the original to last long, flexibility may be gained by means of integration
of temporariness and creating/designing transformable structures. This holds true for the
design of building add-ons, the smallest units of construction. In cases where the overall
design of add-ons could not fit or reflect such criteria, choosing of transformable and flexible
spatial elements84 may be an alternative approach (see Images 10).
Image 10 Left: This lightweight observation tower was built with timber for the whole
structure was initially planned to be removed, relocated or its parts to be sold in the future.
The building may also not change its location. RAHM Architects 2008. Vienna; Right: In the
Media ICT Building, the structural system located on the outer periphery creates a flexible
84 Façade systems, structure, the interior, layout, …

225
interior space in the long term. Architects Enric Ruiz Geli / Cloud 9, 2010. Barcelona (E.
Somer Archive).
Solutions for Achieving Sustainability
As structural add-ons will only reveal their impact to the environment in time, it is
difficult to determine their absolute validity in advance for all times. This difficulty
necessitates the planning of the predictions for the future as detailed as possible and for the
long-term. Otherwise, major losses can occur in the urban fabric.
Deficiencies in planning during the implementation process may cause some major
losses in terms of the building material, building techniques and architectural diversity.
Destruction becomes inevitable when interventions are planned so as to focus on the subject
rather than describing the intervention. This, again, reveals the necessity for defining new
design criteria and approaches85.
Sustainability foresees the creation of flexible spaces suitable for adaptation -in terms
of building technologies- and long utilization periods. A possible way to constitute a solution
for this may be achieved through use of replaceable and changeable spatial elements and
modular systems.
For this purpose, all structural add-ons and the components forming them may be
independently operable and even temporariness may be added without damaging the
original structure [41]. This orientation leads to the necessity to welcome new materials and
technologies.
The above mentioned idea of temporariness should not be interpreted as
disappearance but rather as a gain of functional flexibility, interchangeability, renewability
and reusability. Building technologies based on industrially prefabricated lightweight
building materials which allow fast assembly, easy transportation and stacking may help to
attain this goal.
From this point of approach, the use of lightweight structures and materials reflecting
the current architectural character and allowing transformation comes to mind. The use of
new building technologies will add richness and diversity to architecture (see Images 11).
85 Mechanisms to define aesthetical criteria, the balance between underemphasis and featuring, integration of
matching-contrasting elements and contemporary additions, temporariness and flexibility
226
Image 11 Left: Add-ons of an historical building with use of wood- and steel-based materials.
OAC Gerona, Catalonia. Miquel del Río & lluís Raich 2010; Right: Noxx Apartment in steel
and glass CM Mimarlık 2011 (E. Somer Archive)
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RECONFIGURING THE LIFEWORLD: SPATIAL EXPERIENCE IN THE UNIVERSE OF
TECHNICAL IMAGES
Andrew Chesher
Photographic Space
In Man Ray’s photograph Anatomies from 1929 a shimmering, pale phallic form rears
against a black background. The shoulders visible at the bottom edge of the image and upon
which this shape sits, suggest that what we are looking at is a head; but there is no face, only
a roughly pyramidal volume of silvery skin rising out of the figure’s chest. It does not take
long before we recognise that the odd triangular apex forming the crown of the head is
actually the sitter’s lower jaw seen from below, the head tilted far back so that the face
disappears behind its own jaw and the sitter’s neck stretched upward to take its place. This
chimerical, surreal being is a creation of photographic perception. Photography reveals
spatial anatomies different to those seen by the eye and represented in traditional images.
As the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, the depth of lived space is “not a
geometric or a photographic one” (2006: 73). This paper is an exploration of this distinction,
as well as the relation, between lived perception and photography.
In its rudimentary form our question is about the effect photography has on spatial
experience. For the most part this paper will be concerned with the necessary explication of
the terms of this question it wants to address: What is meant by ‘photography’? And by
‘spatial experience’? First, then, we need to distinguish between photographs on the one
hand, i.e. images and the practices that give rise to them, and on the other, photography as
an apparatus, which I will do in the second section of this paper. Secondly, we need to have
a definition of the lived nature of spatial experience. That is to say, we need to understand
on what basis a distinction such as that Merleau-Ponty made between lived perception and
photographic representation can be made. This I will explore for the most part in the third
section of the paper, where I will start to unfold issues around Edmund Husserl’s concept of
the ‘lifeworld’, which exemplifies a fundamental phenomenological starting point echoed in
Merleau-Ponty’s own analyses of being-in-the-world.
What is the lifeworld? The lifeworld is fundamentally the world of lived experience,
the world as it appears and makes sense within this experience. It is the sense of the world
and our action within it before we begin to reflect on or analyse any part of it; and
importantly for Husserl’s argument in The Crisis of the European Sciences (1970), the
lifeworld makes it possible to analyse or reflect on the world at all, because without our pre-
reflexive lived experience there would be no world for us to comport ourselves towards
theoretically. At times Husserl’s account of the concept seems to suggest it is largely direct
perceptual experience, however, as becomes much clearer in his essay “The Origin of
Geometry” (1970b), the lifeworld is an historical phenomenon in which cultural techniques
and technologies are integrated. Perception is not static; rather, as discussed in third and
fourth sections below, it is reconfigured as new technologies extend it.
229
Part 3 Andrew Chesher Reconfiguring the Lifeworld…
This of course would then include photography. The question is in what way and in what
degree technical images transform perception.
The ‘crisis’ alluded to in the title of Husserl’s book is precisely the way in which the
evidence of the lifeworld is occluded and forgotten in the mathematical model of the world
erected by theoretical sciences. Photography is the product of such a theoretical model.
Vilém Flusser, a proponent of this view, follows a similar line of reasoning to that presented
by Husserl: where Husserl talks of the shapes of pure geometry being products of a deductive
system detached from the intuitively experienced shapes in the lifeworld that they
apparently correspond to, Flusser talks of the photographic images being in reality
realisations of the apparatus’s program rather than images of the world (1983; 2000). As
Benjamin, Barthes and a range of other writers before him, Flusser indicates how technical
images differ from traditional ones. Where Benjamin emphasised how photographs
diminish a certain distance from the world in our experience, Barthes underlined the
potential they have both to naturalise and circumnavigate the cultural codes through which
experience is filtered. Flusser, writing some 50 years after Benjamin and around 25 years
after Barthes first analyses, stands at the beginning of a period when the photographic
apparatus becomes digitised, networked and algorithmically driven.
In the brief concluding section of the paper I will turn to discuss the lifeworld’s
implicit intersubjective nature. The other is one aspect of the lifeworld that is necessarily
excluded from the computation on which the photographic apparatus is based. Because in
itself it is a predictable and ultimately closed system, the apparatus must needs be exclude
the other. By contrast human action, as Hannah Arendt (1998) says, being oriented towards
the other, is unpredictable. Action takes place within the intersubjective horizon of the world
where its fate is unknown. Flusser incites photographers to search for an image not predicted
by the apparatus, and in as much as they do this they can be said to be acting in this
Arendtian sense. And so the investigation into the photographic apparatus in this paper ends
with an acknowledgement of the need to begin again, this time from the point of view of
photographic practices understood as actions that have the potential to reconfigure our
relation to the apparatus.
From Practices to Apparatus
Different photographic practices imply, more or less explicitly, different

understandings of the photographic apparatus, and vice versa. In 1926, ensconced among
the Surrealists in Paris, Man Ray wrote of photography as “a marvellous explorer of those
aspects our retina never records” (1989: 12). Ten years later, Benjamin would write in similar
vein that it is through the camera that “we first discover the optical unconscious” (2008: 37).
Both writers find in the camera’s machine vision a royal road to an uncanny set of
resemblances between things which is the Surrealist preoccupation. It has been argued that
photography, or at least a particular understanding of it as an optical automaton, is the red
thread linking the disparate styles and media of Surrealist art (Krauss 1985). By contrast,
writing from the end of WWII, Andre Bazin’s praise of the cinematic realism in the films of
Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini and other directors is based in the notion that the
photographic image is continuous with the world of our experience, constituted by “a
transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction” that the apparatus effects (2004,
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169). Photographic practices can be distinguished from the photographic apparatus,

although of course the former does not exist in isolation of the latter. Indeed, as all
photographic practice, from daily snaps taken with a tourist camera or smartphone to
commercial or artistic productions, presuppose the apparatus, it is with it that we should
start.
In a journalistic piece published soon after the invention of photography in the late
1830s, Edgar Allan Poe wrote that
the Daguerreotyped plate is infinitely (we use the term advisedly) is infinitely more
accurate in its representation than any painting by human hands. […] the closest
scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more
perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. (1980, 38).
This notion of the photographic image as a faithful representation or at least

emanation of nature runs through a venerable line of commentators. It is there at the root
of Bazin’s realism as well as in Barthes’s Camera Lucida, where however it is less realism
than a return of the real that is attributed to it. In photography’s present, though, it is the
world’s fabrication rather than its resemblance that is apparent when the image is
scrutinised.
A relatively salient aspect of this is the High Dynamic Range function found on the
camera apps of most smartphones nowadays. When you take a photo with HDR turned on,
the camera takes several photographs at different exposures in quick succession. These it
then combines so that what would have been underexposed or overexposed in one image is
augmented by segments from one of the others. What does this is a bit of software that makes
the choice as to what parts of the photographs are desirable and automatically sews them
together. Turning HDR off does not mean, of course, that the resulting image is free of
computer aided simulation. The white balance or overall hue of the image is calculated
algorithmically by the camera, too. In fact, all images appearing on digital screens are
composed of a grid of pixels, each a mathematically determined combination of red, blue
and green light. When a digital camera takes a ‘picture’, it actually produces a data file
containing abstract information about this grid of pixels, which when subsequently
processed by the appropriate algorithms on a computer, is turned into a perceptible image
appearing on a screen.
As photographic images mostly, but certainly not exclusively, result from the camera
being pointed at some segment of the world, it feels like, and often operates as, an index of
that worldly reality. On the surface it may seem to refer to the physical world, but this is not
its real referent, rather a mere simulation covering the digital infrastructure that produces
and shapes photographic images. The meaningful question to ask of the the photographic
apparatus in its algorithmic form, therefore, would be the same one Alexander Galloway
poses for the computer, the ultimate substrate of present day photography. “The matter at
hand”, Galloway writes, “is not that of coming to know the world, but rather that of how
specific, abstract definitions are executed to form a world” (2010, 282). This is a double-
edged sword. On the one hand, the abstraction inherent in the apparatus, in transcending
both the dexterity of the hand and acuity of the eye, also appears to have the potential to
dissolve the cultural codes and conscious interpretations that are reproduced in our habitual
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practices86. On the other hand, the majority of images produced by the apparatus present a
veil behind which its operation remains obscure, and which actually has the effect of
allowing cultural codes built into the apparatus to continue to operate on a subterranean
level.
Space and the Lifeworld
“The photographic apparatus reproduces the purely optical picture”, wrote the newly
appointed ‘Master of Form’ at the Bauhaus, László Moholy-Nagy, in 1923, and it does so, he
added, without rendering it into a “comprehensible whole” as human perception would
(1971, 117). Whilst the photographs of his Russian contemporary Alexander Rodchenko kept
a foot in the social world, emphasising the presence of human spectators in their otherwise
similarly estranged perspectival views of the world, Moholy-Nagy used the subject matter
he photographed to realise a potential in the photographic apparatus itself. In his essay
“Production-Reproduction” of 1922, he “argued for an art of pure sensory experience as
opposed to an interpretative engagement with the imagery of the lifeworld”, which the
camera, once shorn of the reproductive logic attributed to it, would enable (Margolin, 1997,
140).
Where Moholy-Nagy, like Man Ray, saw advantage in the camera’s transfiguration of
perception, Merleau-Ponty saw a flaw. At a number of places in his Phenomenology of
Perception and across a number of his essays Merleau-Ponty demonstrates the gestalt
nature of lived perception – that is, essentially, its integration of sensation within a
“comprehensible whole” – by contrasting it with photographic representation. So, for
example, in “Cezanne’s Doubt” he writes that “in perception, the objects that are near appear
smaller, those far away larger, than they do in a photograph”. To illustrate this he describes
how a train actually approaching us increases in size less quickly than the same train in a
film would appear to (2006: 74)87. The reason for this is that the apparent size of a perceived
object is not a measure of that object in isolation, but arises out of the perceptual situation
as a whole, in which other objects and my own body form an interrelated system along with
the focal object. The world has depth and objects apparent size only for an embodied subject
who is included in the scene they view.
How does technology change our perception of the world? Early in his
Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty explores the phenomenon of apparent size through the
example of the moon’s changing appearance as moves about the sky. When it appears at the
horizon it looks bigger than when it is at its zenith. The explanation for this is that “the parts
of the [perceptual] field act upon one another and motivate this enormous moon” looming
on the horizon. However, “if we gaze attentively, such as through a cardboard tube or a
telescope, we will see that its apparent diameter remains constant” (2012: 34; 30). The
telescope, Don Ihde argues, does indeed transform lived perception, but if it distorts it in
doing so the vision it produces is nonetheless not entirely severed from it. Rather – and this
is something Merleau-Ponty fails to emphasise – “it makes dimensions of the newly
enhanced lifeworld open to perceptual-bodily experience” (2016: 55).
86 The faith placed in the camera as a means to reform vision by not only the Surrealists, but also by other Avant-gardes
from the Russian Constructivists and Dada to the Bauhaus, is reprised in a number of contemporary post-photography
theorists, including, for example, Rubinstein 2013.
87 This example is reiterated from his Phenomenology (271-2).
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So, although photographic imagery, like telescopic vision, represents a mediated and
learnt form of seeing, the difference between it and the lifeworld is not necessarily
unbridgeable. In fact, in Ihde’s account the issue is not how technology comes to change a
supposedly original and pure lived perception, but whether lived perception can be
extricated from its intertwining with technology in the first place. Because, as he tells us,
there is no seeing that is not in some way mediated by cultural techniques or technologies
(2016: 58). Yes, we do have moments of relatively unmediated perception – what Ihde
(1990) calls ‘micro-perception’ – but their meaning is always relative to culturally and
technically mediated systems of perception – or ‘macro-perception’. Perception is
polyvalent; it can and does take various forms both between different cultures and historical
periods as well as within a single cultural context. Nonetheless, true to his Husserlian
heritage, Ihde saw mediated perception as reciprocally founded in direct perception.
Reconfiguring the Lifeworld
What happens to depth perception when vision is abstracted from the relation
between the subject’s body and other things? The camera itself does not ‘see’ depth; it does
not perceive, it functions. Only when it is works in tandem with the embodied eye can the
vision it produces become part of the spatio-temporal lifeworld. Direct perception of an
object-world is at the core, as Husserl saw it, of the concrete, pre-scientific experience that
makes up the lifeworld. The question, then, is whether it is possible that in reconfiguring our
macro-perception, the simulacral surface of technically produced images might displace the
spatial depth identified by Merleau-Ponty and Husserl as an essential dimension of the
lifeworld, to the degree that experience of, and in, depth became an exception rather than
the founding reference for all knowledge.
Although Husserl placed unmediated perception at the core of the lifeworld and the
origin of scientific knowledge, he also accounted for the integration of techniques that
extend subjective perception into objective knowledge. The Husserlian lifeworld is not only,
therefore, the concrete world of micro-perception, but also a series of sedimented ‘ideal
acquisitions’ compacted into perceptual habits and practices. Numbers are a good example
of an ideal acquisition, something learnt that then shapes our perception unconsciously. For
those of us living in a numerate culture it is hard to envisage a human lifeworld without
number, but there have been cultures that did not count. According to linguist Daniel
Everett, the Pirahã people in Brazil are the only remaining culture that does not count and
whose language lacks grammatical number (2008, 220; 195). Having spent some 30 years
living for lengthy periods with the Pirahãs and studying their language, Everett describes
how the latter is formed around what he describes “the cultural immediacy of experience
principle”. That is to say, only what is “anchored to the moment” of speech is spoken about,
and as a consequence the Pirahã language possesses no grammar that expresses anything
relative to any other point in time, such as the past perfect or future perfect tenses in
European languages (131-2). This explains why they have no number words, as “number
entails a violation of immediacy of experience in so many of its uses—as a category it
generalises beyond the immediate, establishing larger generalisations” (196). We non-
Pirahãs acquire this category as children. Perhaps the acquisition is laborious at first, but in
later life the idea of seeing quantities of objects solely in terms of ‘fewer’ or ‘more’ as the
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Pirahãs do, rather than numerically, seems even more difficult conceive of than ‘reactivating’
the original intuitions in which we first grasped the concept of number.
Husserl saw a difference between the ideal acquisitions of basic numeracy and
mathematical science, however. Pure geometry, which is Husserl’s recurring example, does
not deal with the actual and necessarily more or less vague shapes of the lifeworld, but rather
corresponds to an “ideal space” of fully determined shapes. These ideal shapes – platonic
triangles, squares or four-dimensional cubes, what have you – cannot be intuited, only
calculated; they don’t exist phenomenally. Rather they are derivations of an abstract system
of “axiomatic concepts and propositions” permitting the “deductively univocal construction
of any conceivable shape” (1970, 22). A threshold is crossed with such ideal acquisitions. Not
only would it be extremely difficult to trace the chain of axioms and theorems that constitute
them back to an original intuitive experience in the perceptual lifeworld, but the self-
sufficiency of such a theoretical system seemed to Husserl to threaten to bury the evidence
presented in our experience of the directly perceived world in irremediable forgetfulness.
Here the roots of Flusser’s ‘ladder of abstraction’ can be discerned. Beginning in the
“concrete lifeworld”, Flusser’s model describes how a series of acquired techniques and
technologies – running from hand tools, through traditional images and texts, to technical
images, each subsequent form remediating the former – progressively distances us from the
concrete starting point of our being (2011, 6-10). In fact, Flusser’s account of the rise and
effects of the ‘universe of technical images’ bears a striking resemblance to Husserl’s account
of the rise and effects of theoretical science. “We owe [technical] images”, Flusser writes, “to
a technology that came from scientific theories, theories that show us ineluctably that ‘in
reality’ everything is a swarm of points in a state of decay, a yawning emptiness” (38). Take
away the hyperbole and you are very close to Husserl’s thesis: the abstraction of theoretical
science may derive from the directly experienced world, but it need not be referred back to
it in order to function. It forms a self-sufficient system of symbolically defined idealities,
which though “reliable in accomplishing obviously very useful things”, works like “a machine
[that] everyone can learn to operate correctly without in the least understanding the inner
possibility and necessity of this sort of accomplishment” (1970: 52).
Flusser’s diagnosis of the crisis experienced on the last rung of his ladder of
abstraction, that of “computation and calculation” (2011, 7), is that technical images so
pervade our lives, and their infrastructural origins within the black box of the apparatus are
so opaque to us, that we have become their functionaries. Here we have a thesis that inverts
Ihde’s optimism: the photographic apparatus no longer extends our perception; rather we
become an extension of its logic. Flusser’s argument applies not only to the computerised
image, which had not yet become the de facto form for photography at the time he was
writing, but also the analogue image. “Photography does not simply reproduce the real,”
Sontag observed, “it recycles it” (1979, 174). The world serves photography, rather than
photography the world. Flusser, who made this contention, refers to the situation this
relation gives rise to as “the photographic universe”: photographic images are produced to
realise possibilities inherent within the photographic apparatus itself. Photographs would
be, in this respect, the predetermined outcome of the apparatus rather that a translation of
a subjective intuition. Therefore they substitute a surface simulation for the depth of the
lifeworld, which they reconfigure as an “image-world”, to use Sontag’s phrase.
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In lieu of a conclusion: Unpredictability and the Apparatus
In lieu of a conclusion to this discussion, I want to allude to an aspect of Husserl’s

concept of the lifeworld I have not raised so far, but which suggests a different approach to
the relation between it and the technical image. Husserl calls this aspect “horizon-certainty”:
We always already know of our present world and that we live in it, always
surrounded by an openly endless horizon of unknown actualities. This knowing, as
horizon-certainty, is not something learned, not knowledge that was once actual and
has merely sunk back to become part of the background; horizon-certainty […] is
already presupposed in order that we can seek to know what we do not know. All
knowing concerns the unknown world, which yet exists in advance for us as world
(1970b, 373-4).
The lifeworld is not primarily what is known, but what could be know as well as what
is, was or will be known by others. The possibility of such other perceptions form the horizon
of the world, which without them would not be a world in Husserl’s sense at all. Lived space
is an expression of this horizon-certainty. Depth, as Merleau-Ponty makes clear in The
Visible and the Invisible, implies reversibility: the thing I see, can see me. This is the full
sense of lived spatiality. The fact that only an embodied being included in the world can
perceive it spatially, means that they too must be spatial; this in term entails that the
perspective can be reversed, and the perceiving subject can become the object of another
perception. Hence the spatiality of the world implies at least the potential existence of
others.
The problem of photography, as Flusser sees it, is how to evade the prediction of the
apparatus. The photographer’s “acts are programmed by the camera”, he writes. His answer
is for them to seek freedom by “playing against the camera” (1983, 72-3; 2000, 80).
Unpredictability is to be sought, then, in photographic practices. They cannot change the
apparatus itself, at least not directly, only the way we encounter it. In other words, they have
their sense in relation to others in the lifeworld. They are action, in Arendt’s (1998) sense of
the term. Action takes place across the intersubjective synapse, and its originator cannot
know how the other, who is its necessary continuation, will receive it, nor in what form they
will pass it on. Whereas the operation of the machine is predictable – except where it fails to
operate and then becomes a mere thing – action is unpredictable. In operating, apparatuses
no more act than they perceive. So, although it is necessary to pass through an exploration
of the photographic apparatus, practices are not only its derivatives. Once we see them in
terms of action, we can begin to appreciate how they create a space for reconfiguring our
relation to the apparatus.
References
1. Arendt, H., 1998, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago.
2. Barthes, R., 1993, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage.
3. Bazin, A., 2004, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, eds. L. Braudy and M.
Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 166-170.
235
4. Benjamin, W., 2008, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility:
Second Version’, eds. M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, and T. Y. Levin, The Work of Art
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London: Harvard University Press, 19-55
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Amazonian Jungle, London: Profile Books.
6. Flusser, V., 1983, Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie, Berlin: European
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10. Ihde, D., 1990, Technology and the Lifeworld, From Garden to Earth, Bloomington;
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
11. Ihde, D., 2016, “Husserl’s Galileo Needed a Telescope!”, Husserl’s Missing
Technologies, New York: Fordham University Press, 35-58.
12. Krauss, R., 1985, ‘The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism’, The Originality of the
Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 87-118.
13. Moholy-Nagy, L., 1971, Moholy-Nagy, ed. R. Kostelanetz, London: Allen Lane.
14. Man Ray, 1989, “Deceiving Appearances”, ed. C. Phillips, Photography in the Modern
Era, European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art; Aperture, 11-12.
15. Margolin, V., 1997, “The Politics of Form: Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy 1922-1929”,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 123-161.
16. Merleau-Ponty, M., 1968, The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press.
17. Merleau-Ponty, M., 2007, “Cezanne’s Doubt’, eds. T. Toadvine and L. Lawlor, The
Merleau-Ponty Reader, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 69-84.
18. Merleau-Ponty, M., 2012, Phenomonology of Perception, London: Routledge.
19. Poe, E.A., 1980, “The Daguerreotype”, ed. A. Trachtenberg. Classic Essays on
Photography, New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 37-8
20. Rubinstein D., 2013, “The Grin of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Photography and the
Limits of Representation”, eds. D. Rubinstein, J. Golding and A. Fisher, On The Verge
of Photography: Imaging Beyond Representation, Birmingham: Article Press, 33-47
21. Sontag, S., 1979, On Photography, London: Penguin.
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SPACE/GEOGRAPHY AND TIME/HISTORY IN PAUL AUSTER’S MOON PALACE: A
HETEROTOPOLOGICAL EXPLORATION
Hatice Bay
History is always written from the sedentary point of view and in the name of a
unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads. What
is lacking is Nomadology, the opposite of a history (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 23).
Paul Auster’s Moon Palace is about a traumatized character Marco Stanley Fogg, who
strives to construct a meaningful self and place in the world. Through his excursions across
some specific spaces of otherness such as, the Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, the Columbia art library and other American landscapes (especially the American West),
Fogg not only looks for his ancestors; he at the same time rewrites a counter-history of the
nation. In this process, his grandfather Thomas Effing helps Fogg out of his loneliness and
the loss of self and becomes a valuable source for his further revaluating the trajectories of
his country’s past and present. In this context, I suggest that Foucault's heterotopia is an
apposite concept to understand how some other spaces are instrumental in resistance,
subversion, transgression and offering new opportunities for the evaluation and usage of
space.
According to Foucault, heterotopias are different spaces, which are “outside of all
places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality,” and as places
which constitute a “simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we
live” (1986: 24). As Johnsson stressess heterotopia refers to “varied spatial and temporal
disruptions that imaginatively interrogate and undermine certain formulations of utopia”
(2006:75). Heterotopias are invaluable because they are spaces of alternative ordering and
as Palladino and Miller note heterotopia “is a space or a language in which to think things
differently” (2015:3). Foucault's approach to history presented in his article, “Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History” will also be applied to the characters’ search for their ancestors
(Foucault 1984). Foucault posits that genealogical inquiry shows that history is not solely
about a linear temporal representation of the past. Similarly, Auster's characters’
heterotopic search for their descent introduces genealogy, hence, history, as a series of
discontinuous spaces, faultlines, mines, fissures and serendipities rather than a single
seamless narrative. Furthermore, places become not simply a passive landscape or
background where history takes place. This article aims to show that re-visiting the past
heterotopologically acknowledges nature as a historical entity on its own. Thus, history may
also allow non-human elements such as nature, landscape and environment to have an
intrinsic worth rather than phenomena that can be dominated by the human subject.
Heterotopic evaluation of places, additionally, turns out to be a process about not unearthing
the past but reaching out the repressed, silenced and forgotten others and making room for
them in the discursive realm. Hence, I suggest that through either critically harbouring
heterotopic spaces or actively constructing them, Auster's characters show that history may
become an open arena that is hosting and welcoming to what was once excluded, silenced
and sidelined.
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Part 3 Hatice Bay Space/Geography and Time/History…
Towards Heterotopical Investigations into history/time and geography/space

in Moon Palace
Moon Palace opens with Marco Stanley Fogg, who is trapped in an existential crisis.
The reason of his crisis is the unexpected death of Uncle Victor, his only living relative. Born
in 1947, Fogg never met his father and loses his mother in a road accident when he was
eleven. Thus, Uncle Victor, his mother’s brother, becomes his surrogate father, supporting
his education and encouraging his intellectual development. For Fogg, Uncle Victor was
always a reassuring source of comfort and wisdom, thus, his sudden death shutters his
world. As a consolation, he begins to read the books he inherits from his uncle. His mourning
phase is also the beginning of a new identity process in which he attempts to understand
himself and define his place in the world. As a first step, he chooses to disconnect himself
from the system, society and social conventions, whose values he despises. When he reflects
on his situation in retrospect, he muses:
I was in despair, and in the face of so much upheaval, I felt that drastic action of
some sort was necessary. I wanted to spit on the world, to do the most outlandish
thing possible. With all fervor and idealism of a young man who had thought too
much and read too many books, I decided that the thing I should do was nothing:
my action would consist of a militant refusal to take any action at all. This was
nihilism raised to the level of aesthetic proposition. I would turn my life into a work
of art, sacrificing myself to such exquisite paradoxes that every breath I took would
teach me how to savor my own doom (ibid. 20).
Nonetheless, his denial to take any action does not mean that closes himself in his
own the world. On the contrary, he takes a rebellious attitude against the political, cultural
and urban environment he finds himself in. Thus, the more Fogg is disaffected and alienated
from his surroundings, the more engaged he becomes with what is happening in the world.
Instead of passively mourning or taking part in the system, Fogg keeps a critical pulse of the
history of the present. To begin with, he takes refuge at Central Park, which is a counter-
emplacement that helps Fogg reflect, contest, and invert the rest of normalised spaces
existing all around it. Namely, at Central Park, Fogg constructs a horizontal way of life in
opposition to the vertical urban existence. He lives on the ground, eats from the garbage and
reduces himself to the most basic needs. He explicitly voices out his discontent with the
“rigid protocols” that the vertical city spaces demand of the individual. He says: “In the
streets, everything is bodies and commotion, and like it or not, you cannot enter them
without adhering to a rigid protocol of behaviour. To walk among the crowd means never
going faster than anyone else, never lagging behind your neighbour, never doing anything
to disrupt the flow of human traffic” (ibid. 55). By contrast, Central Park becomes “a
sanctuary for [him], a refuge of inwardness against the grinding demands of the streets.
There were eight hundred and forty acres to roam in, and unlike the massive gridlock of
buildings and towards that loomed outside the perimeter, the park offered [him] the
possibility of solitude, of separating [himself] from the rest of the world” (ibid.). More
significantly, Fogg points out that his stay at the park is a political enterprise:
238
In my less exultant moods, I tended to look at myself from a political perspective,

hoping to justify my condition by treating it as a challenge to the American way. I
was an instrument of sabotage, I told myself, a loose part in the national machine, a
misfit whose job was to gum up the works. No one could look at me without feeling
shame or anger or pity. I was living proof that the system had failed, that the smug,
overfed land of plenty was finally cracking apart (ibid. 60).
Obviously, Fogg distances himself from the dominant order and however brief, he
constructs for himself a differential place and a differential time freed from social norms
such as wealth, success, career.
The Central Park episode besides offering an inner space and escape from the norms,
at the same time makes Fogg aware of the impossibility of dissociation from the other(s).
Fogg learns that the self does not have any existence and meaning without any active social
interaction with the other. Namely, emotional and interpersonal relationships, especially,
making room for the other, even serving for the other is indispensable. That is why after his
Central Park sojourn, he begins to work for an elderly man Thomas Effing. Fogg moves into
Effing’s apartment and in time he delves into the past: the past of his nation as well as his
own self.
Effing turns out to be a blind and paralysed elderly man who needs Fogg’s assistance
for his outings in the streets of New York and for the editing of his autobiography. Fogg’s
assignment is not as easy as it looks. Effing takes on the role of Fogg’s mentor. As Fogg
remarks, “At times I felt that he was trying to pass on some mysterious and arcane
knowledge to me, acting as a self-appointed mentor to my inner progress…This was Effing
as crackpot spiritual guide, as an eccentric master struggling to initiate me into the secrets
of the world” (ibid. 105). Day by day, he introduces Fogg to the new systems of thought and
new ways of revolting against “subjugated knowledges”(Foucault 2003:7). During their
excursions, for instance, Effing wants Fogg to give him a precise account of his surroundings
and teaches him to look at his environment attentively. Hence, from casual indifference,
Fogg passes through a stage of intense alertness. He says, “My descriptions became overly
exact, desperately trying to capture every possible nuance of what I was seeing, jumbling up
details in a mad scramble to leave nothing out”(Auster 2004: 118). Effing, thus, equips Fogg
with the art of seeing which will become of immense importance for enhancing his self-
understanding, self-awareness and other-awareness.
In the following days, Effing asks Fogg if he knows Ralph Blakelock, an artist who had
been one of the greatest artists of America at the beginning of the twentieth century. An
artist born and lived in the West, Blakelock spent time in the wilderness and lived shortly
with the Indians. Effing recounts how Blakelock had been exploited, neglected and forced to
lead a miserable life by the authorities. He was ousted and incarcerated in an asylum because
of his “deviant” and counter-cultural attitudes. The next day, as an assignment, Effing sends
Fogg to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to explore the Moonlight painting of Blakelock. He
strictly insists that Fogg look at, study and concentrate on the painting for more than an
hour as if there was nothing else but this painting in the entire world (ibid. 131). Additionally,
he forbids Fogg to talk to anyone: “All these things must happen in silence” (ibid.). When
Fogg sees the painting he feels disappointed because instead of encountering “something
grandiose, perhaps, some loud and garish display of superficial brilliance,” he finds himself
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before “a somber little picture,” “a deeply contemplative work, a landscape of inwardness

and calm” which is “devoid of color: dark brown, dark green, the smallest touch of red in one
corner” (ibid. 133). Then, he continues to give almost two pages long description of the
painting with the smallest details. The painting further baffles Fogg because he cannot make
any sense of it. But then he begins to recognize the “obscure details” and “odd things” in the
picture (ibid. 134). He asks
But if hadn’t been trying to represent an actual landscape, what had he been up to?
I did my best to imagine it, but the greenness of the sky kept stopping me. A sky the
same color as the earth, a night that looks like a day, and all human forms dwarfed
by the bigness of the scene- illegible shadows, the merest ideograms of life (ibid.
135).
The more Fogg scrutinizes the painting the more “serenity seemed to dominate the picture”
(ibid.). At first he imagined that the painting stands for an American idyll, the world the
Indians had inhabited before the white men came to destroy it (ibid.). When he sees the date
of the painting, however, he changes his mind. His second guess was that, “this picture was
meant to stand for everything we had lost. It was not a landscape, it was a memorial, a death
song for a vanished world” because it had been painted in 1885, almost precisely in the
middle of the period between Custer’s Last Stand and the massacre at Wounded Knee (ibid.).
After the museum visit, intrigued by the painting he does some research at the Columbia art
library and studies the other paintings of Blakelock and there encounters “the same forest,
the same moon, the same silence” (ibid. 136). Fogg is not able to see the moons as moons
any more: “They became holes in the canvas, apertures of whiteness looking out onto
another world. Blakelock’s eye, perhaps. A blank circle suspended in space, gazing down at
things that were no longer there” (ibid.). Evidently, Effing’s purpose is not only to enable
Fogg to reinterpret history creatively but also to underscore the fact that history is accessed
through through non-textual objects like paintings and other sensory experiences like visual
and aural perceptions. This insight emerges through visiting heterotopic sites such as the
museum and the library, which are both repositories of the infinite possibilities forced out
by time.
Next, Effing introduces Thomas Moran who was the official artist for the Hayden and
Powell expeditions (Auster 2004:144-145). Unlike Blakelock who was locked up in a mental
hospital and largely neglected by the historians, Moran enjoyed fame and recognition in his
lifetime. Effing states that he painted the “first painting of the Grand Canyon, which is
hanging in the Capitol building in Washington; the first painting of Yellowstone, the first
painting of the Great Salt Desert, the first paintings of the canyon country in the southern
Utah” (ibid. 145). He further recounts how Moran was not on the same kind of quest as
Blakelock who wandered through the wilderness “like some benighted pilgrim” (ibid. 144).
Instead, “Moran did it in style,” (ibid.) he tells Fogg. Namely, he systematically bestowed
awe-inspiring, resplendent and majestic view of the American wilderness, “by inextricably
combining nature, nation and providence in the paintings” (Hallet 2008: 121). Effing states
exclaims:
Manifest Destiny! They mapped it out, they made pictures of it, they digested it into
the great American profit machine. Those were the last bits of the continent, the
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blank spaces no one had explored. Now here it was, all laid out on a pretty piece of
canvas for everyone to see. The golden spike, driven right through our hearts!
(Auster 2004: 145)88
As a result, westerners like Moran produced images of the West that created spaces of
interest which spurred tourism, construction and invasive capitalism; hence, paved the way
for the encroachment and later destruction of the West. Effing states that
Glen Canyon, Monument Alley, the Valley of the Gods. That’s where they shoot all
those cowboy-and-Indian movies, the goddamned Marlboro man gallops through
there on television every night. But pictures don’t tell you anything about it, Fogg.
It’s all massive to be painted or drawn; even photographs can’t get the feel of it.
Everything is so distorted, it’s like trying to reproduce the distances in outer space:
the more you see, the less your pencil can do. To see it is to make it vanish too (ibid.
152-153).
As the quotation above illustrates, Effing severely criticizes the way American forefathers
invaded, occupied and most significantly, transformed the West into consumable
commodity. Thus, by criticizing mainstream painters and reinscribing another painter like
Blakelock into art history as one of the forefathers (Hallet 2008:126), Fogg and Effing
disrupt the ideological genealogy of American history and historiography.
Significantly, Effing’s critical stance towards mainstream American painters and
historiography is based on his first-hand experience of the West and environmental
concerns. Back in the nineteen-twenties, as an aspiring painter, who is under the influence
of Thomas Moran, Effing abandons his wife in order to explore the exotic and untamed
American Midwest. During his travels in the West, a sensibility awakens in Effing not only
towards the subtle changes and environmental damage but also more generally to what lies
behind the official version of events. He remembers,
It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The flattest, most desolate spot on the
planet, a boneyard of oblivion. You travel along day after day, and you don’t see a
goddamned thing. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a single blade of grass. Nothing but
whiteness, cracked earth stretching into the distance on all sides.
…
Whiteness, and then more whiteness. How can you draw something if you don’t
know it’s there? You see what I’m talking about, don’t you? It didn’t feel human
anymore.
…
He continues to recount thus:
The land is too big out there, and after a while it starts to swallow you up. I reached
a point when I couldn’t take it in anymore. All that bloody silence and emptiness.
You try to find your bearings in it, but it’s too big, the dimensions are too monstrous,
88 Here, Effing refers to Hudson River School Painters, whose aesthetic vision was influenced by the European
Romantic movement and who created “American” landscapes.
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and eventually, I don’t know how else to put it, eventually it just stops being there
(Auster 2004:150,151,152).
Effing’s critical approach to mainstream painters and his own journey to the West can be
read as a descent into genealogy whose aim is “to identify the accidents, the minute
deviations, -or conversely, the complete reversals- the errors, the false appraisals, and the
faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for
us; it is to discover that truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know and what we
are, but the exteriority of accidents” (Foucault 1984: 81). Furthermore, Effing's genealogy
introduces a biocentric and biocritic approach to the conceptualization of the spaces of the
West. Nature has a life of its own; thus, Effing asks for the recognition of nature for its own
sake. Here, “the distinction between observing human subject and observed natural objects
is systematically undermined” (Garrard 2004: 48) leading to, as Jonathan Bate in The Song
of the Earth states, the “‘dissolution of the self from the perceiving eye into ecologically
connected organism’” (ibid.). By implication, “[t]here is no such thing as an individual,
only… individual as a component of place, defined by place” (Evernden 1996:103).
Furthermore, Effing conceives nature as an ungraspable, impenetrable and unmanifestable
space. Genealogy thus constitutes an ethical practice that is against an imperialistic
ontologization of landscape and an act of a moral undertaking that preserves the mystery
and distinctiveness of the other, in this case the Western spaces of America. In this sense,
the genealogy of the West is essentially a counter-hegemonic practice that focuses on the
faultlines of established Western history and officially sanctioned spaces.
After Effing’s death, Fogg meets Effing’s son Solomon Barber in order to deliver
Effing’s autobiography to him. Effing turns out to be Fogg’s grandfather as Barber turns out
to be Fogg’s missing father whom he believed to be dead. When Fogg learns that Barber is
his father, in a scuffle, he accidentally causes his death. Thus, the moment he finds his father,
he loses him at the same time. Once more, we see that heritage is not “an acquisition, a
possession that grows and solidifies; rather, it is an unstable assemblage of faults, fissures,
and heterogeneous layers that threaten the fragile inheritor from within and from
underneath” (Foucault 1984: 82).The way Fogg ruminates on the words Moon Palace
encapsulates Foucault’s argument. Fogg’s heterotopic rumination is worth quoting at
length:
Everything was mixed up in [Moon Palace] at once: Uncle Victor and China, rocket
ships and music, Marco Polo and the American West. I would look at the sign and
start to think about electricity. That would lead me to the blackout during my
freshman year, which in turn would lead me to the baseball games played at
Wringley Field, which would then lead me back to Uncle Victor and the memorial
candles burning on my windowsill. One thought kept giving way to another;
spiralling into ever larger masses of connectedness. The idea of voyaging into the
unknown , for example, and the parallels between Columbus and the astronauts.
The discovery of America as a failure to reach China; Chinese food and my empty
stomach; thought, as in food for thought, and the head as a palace of dreams. I would
think: the Apollo Project; Apollo, the god of music; Uncle Victor and the Moon Men
travelling out West. I would think: the West; the war against the Indians; the war in
Vietnam, once called Indochina. I would think: weapons, bombs, explosions;
nuclear clouds in the deserts of Utah and Nevada; and then I would ask myself- why
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does the American West look so much like the landscape of the moon? (Auster
2004:31-32)
In the above passage, in bringing together unthinkable spaces and incongruous histories
without reducing them to a single and seeamless narrative, Fogg highlights the full range of
spatial and imaginative possibilities that history may encompass. As a last effort in search
of some sense of origin and past, Fogg continues his explorative journey in the West, where
he hopes to find some traces of Effing only to find out that the whole area has been flooded.
Failing completely, he takes a long walk further west until he reaches the Pacific coast, where
he looks out onto the shores of China while the full moon rises. The last words of Moon
Palace read propitious: “I had come to the end of the world, and beyond it there was nothing
but air and waves, and emptiness that went clear to the shores of China. This is where I start,
I said to myself, this is where my life begins” (ibid. 298).
Conclusion
Consequently, in Moon Palace, the protagonists, Fogg and Effing trace their family
history, personal history and national history through spatial movements. What comes out
is not a linear, progressive history but a circular history, in which the generations with their
eccentric appearances, missed marriages, sins and failures repeat themselves. In this cyclical
notion of time which is also epitomised with the title of the novel, the trajectory of history is
at the same time incongruent. Therefore, as Jenkins states “this incongruity, this somewhat
bizarre ‘reality’, offers the hope that, from the most unlikely people and from the most
unlikely places, the ‘social’ that ‘contains us’ is never so hegemonic, is never so tightly
sutured, as to prevent iconoclastic, irreverent and disobedient voices from speaking”
(Jenkins 2011: 584). As we have seen throughout the novel, although spatializing national
and familial genealogy differently is characterized by losses and compulsive repetitions, it is
at the same time balanced by new acquisitions, new rectifications, new beginnings as well as
other selves, other histories and other geographies and most significantly, critical and
creative regeneration of the individuals themselves. To conclude, constructing history
heterotopologically exemplifies a positive understanding of history as a democratic,
egalitarian, inclusive and cooperative practice.
References
1. Auster P., 2004, Moon Palace. Great Britain: Faber and Faber.
2. Deleuze, G and F. Guattari., 1987, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Vol. 2. Trans B. Massumi, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press.
3. Evernden, N., 1996, “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathatic Fallacy”, The
Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, eds. C. Glotfelty and H.
Fromm, Athens, Ga: U of Georgia P, 92-104.
4. Foucault, M., 1984, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, The Foucault Reader, Ed. P.
Rabinow. Harmondworth: Penguin, 87-90.
5. Foucault, M., 1986, “Of Other Spaces”, Diacritics,16.1, 22-26.
243
6. Foucault, M., 2003, Society Must Be Defended. New York: Picador.

7. Garrard, G., 2004, Ecocriticism, London: Routledge.
8. Hallet, W., 2008, Paul Auster: Moon Palace, Stuttgart: Klett.
9. Jenkins, K., 2011, “Alun Munslow: in conversation with Keith Jenkins”. Rethinking
History, 567- 586.
10. Johnson, P., 2006, “Unravelling Foucault’s 'Different Spaces'’, History of the Human
Sciences, 19:4, 75-90.
11. Palladino, M. and Miller, J., 2015, “Introduction”, The Globalization of Space, ed. by
M. Palladino and J. Miller, London: Pickering and Chatto, 1-12.
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“TIME HAS NO MEANING, SPACE AND PLACE HAVE NO MEANING, ON THIS
JOURNEY”: TIME AND SPACE IN JEANETTE WINTERSON’S SEXING THE CHERRY
Malgorzata Wronka
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to

remember.
Lies 2: Time is a straight line.
Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is
that one has happened while the other has not.
Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time.
Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite'
(the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...)
Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon.
Lies 7: Reality is truth. (Winterson 1990: 90)
The Postmodern Perspective on Time and Space
A postmodern approach towards the concepts of time and space focuses on their
fragmentation, non-linearity and disruption. As one of the most prominent factors in the
postmodern novel, time and space form part of Ihab Hassan’s scheme, which characterizes
postmodernism as antithetical, disjunctive, dispersed, schizophrenic and anti-narrative
among many others (1997: 591-2). It indicates departure from the existing norms of
coherent, systematic and clear narrative. From now on, the perception of reality will alter
and “postmodernism [will change] the way the past is re-presented, the contemporary
apprehended and the future envisioned, and it [will change] fundamentally perceptions of
space and place” (Smethurst 2000:1). Postmodern writers use the notion of time both as a
straight line and a spiral, which allows them to take the reader on the journey through
different places and epochs. Because of time’s infinity, a number of events can take place at
the same moment. The concept of the time travel gives the writer the possibility of
constructing parallel worlds and completely new, previously unknown, places. What is more,
time is a link between the past, present, and future. As Milada Frankova says:
The notions of time are slippery, as their paths move and slide between scientific
time, biological time, traditional time, the arbitrariness of various calendars and
mechanical time-keeping by inexorably ticking clocks or now, more often, the
jumping figures of the luminous electronic face. Literary time has all of this and
more to grapple with: dream time, fantasy time, the reversal of time, the end of time
(2000: 65).
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Part 3 Malgorzata Wronka “Time Has No Meaning…
The notion of time, which seems to be directly connected with the concept of space, is a very
complex issue since it is not easy to define its beginning or end, its place or location. In
literature, the notion of time is like a liaison which can bring the reader to the world of
fantasy or move him/her years back into the historical past. Time allows to change one’s own
position and balance on the verge of two worlds – the real and the imagined one.
On the Borderline of Two Worlds: Jeanette Winterson and Her Novels
In her novels, Jeanette Winterson focuses on the creation of metaphysical duality and
multiple time and space dimensions, which co-exist together by alternating, splitting, and
meeting again in order to create an indissoluble totality. To quote Sonia Front: “ [t]ime is
one of the themes Jeanette Winterson is obsessed with: the nature of time, its impact on
people, and time’s interaction with consciousness to create a sense of identity” (2009: 159).
Almost every piece of her writing can be treated as a kind of illustration to present “the old-
established notions of time and space and to portray temporality and spatiality of her ideal”
(Sönmez 2009: xi). The writer playfully juggles with the idea of time and space, which can
be observed in her books such as Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the
Cherry or Lighthousekeeping, just to mention some of them. The way Winterson uses the
concepts of time and space allows her protagonists to look from various perspectives and
thereby they can get to know themselves better, re-discover their own lives and escape from
the harsh reality. As she says herself: “a book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere”
(2012: 34). Following this statement, Winterson tries to break free from the chains of
oppressive reality, limitations of time and restrictions of space and turns to the freedom of
movement on the space-time axis.
The fysion of past, present, future, real, and fictional leads to magical realism, which
is also an inseparable part of Winterson’s novels. The writer decides to combine magic and
mundanity, history and fairy tales, myths and biblical motifs since all these elements create
an unrepeatable world of magical realism with no boundaries and time or space limits. In
her works, fantastic figures, legendary heroes, and mythological elements overlap with
historical places, events, and characters, which results in the radical break with
conventionality.
She mixes historical facts with her own imaginings about them and about historical
personae, their actions and idiosyncrasies, enriching bland cartoon-like historical
statements with depth and vividness, and filling in their gaps. The real historical
figures meeting fictional ones operate as validations of the fictional report. […] The
apocryphal aspects bear so much authority and persuasiveness that the reader
accepts them as facts, which enacts historiographic metafiction’s assumption that
its world is both fictive and historical. The collapse of frontiers between history and
fiction highlights textuality as their common feature (Front 2009: 173).
Readers become so much involved in “a journey of imagination, through fictional worlds and
textual spaces” (Andermahr 2009: 87) that they cannot tell the difference between facts and
lies. Winterson creates places where the truth merges with fiction, therefore, “[t]he notion
of ‘truth’ is questioned […] and the possibility of authoritative overarching version of history
246
is declined” (Front 2009: 156). She blurs the line between reality and magic and makes her
readers start to wonder which of the stories are supposed to be the real ones.
(Non)Liearity of Time and (In)Definiteness of Space on the Example of

Sexing the Cherry
Winterson experiments with different forms and genres as well as she juxtaposes
things which are known as diametrically opposed, which can be clearly visible while
investigating her novels. I have chosen Sexing the Cherry as the source of my analysis since
it is “a paradoxical type of postmodernist novel that combines self-reflexivity with history”
(Onega 2006: 76). The book is the link between two parallel worlds of reality and
imagination. It is also a journey through history, time, different lands, and places both inside
and outside the earthly world. The reader, together with the Dog Woman, is a witness of real
events which take place in the 17th century London and simultaneously s/he is a voyager,
who by Jordan’s side, visits different realities. Because the nature of time is fragmented and
broken into pieces it can be read twofold – objectively (by the use of clocks) and subjectively
(“the time we feel”) (Ágota 2010: 1). In consequence here and now may be everywhere and
defining the truth seems to be almost an impossible task. Places of action, the notion of time,
and stories told by different protagonists change so rapidly and dynamically that the
boundary between reality and fantasy begins to blur and disappear. Magic and realism
interweave and complement each other creating the story about the quest of dreams.
Although, as it has been already mentioned, Sexing the Cherry is the mixture of
reality and fantasy, I will separate them and analyse each of these elements independently
starting with the discussion on the realistic aspects of the novel. The story begins on the
banks of the river Thames, which “introduces with itself the weight of previous historical
and cultural encodings” (Front 2009: 194). It is the borderline between England and remote
lands, a place where history meets with the present and where the Dog Woman finds Jordan.
The river is also a symbolic place since here begin and finish all Jordan’s adventures: “The
shining water and the size of the world. I have seen both again and again since I left my
mother on the banks of the black Thames, but in my mind it is always the same place I return
to, and that one place not the most beautiful nor the most surprising” (Winterson 1991: 11).
Even when Jordan continues his journeys through exotic lands, the appearance of the
Thames on the horizon symbolises his return home. It can be assumed that, subconsciously,
Jordan knows that the river is one of the few stable points which will never disappear or turn
into oblivion. It is a safe haven which remains unchangeable and firm even if the rest of
protagonist’s life seems to be like a soap bubble – volatile and unsettled.
In the first part of the book prevail detailed descriptions of London: “London is a foul
place, full of pestilence and rot, […] [t]he streets are badly lit and the distance from one side
to the other no more than the span of [Jordan’s] arms. The stone crumbles, the cobbles are
uneven. The people who throng the streets shout at each other” (ibid. 6,11). It is a filthy,
smelly and overcrowded city where citizens have to face hardships of life in the 1600s. The
reader, whose ability to tell the difference between the truth and fiction is not yet completely
lost, learns about the life in the 17th century England. Susana Onega presents the exact
chronology of historical events in Sexing the Cherry. Following her findings, everything
begins around 1630 when the lives of the Dog Woman and Jordan are bound by the fate.
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From this moment the reader is taken into the journey through London where s/he is a
witness of “Charles I’s reign, [...] the Civil War and the Puritan Commonwealth, the king’s
trial and execution in 1649 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and end with the
Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London of 1666” (Onega 2006: 77). The reader may take
part in these events side by side with common citizens, kings, Puritans or even Oliver
Cromwell, which altogether gives an impression of a historical book rather than a fiction
story. What is more, there appears the figure of John Tradescant who was indeed a gardener
to 1st Earl of Slisbury at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. In Sexing the Cherry,
Winterson reminds about the man who “sailed to exotic places collecting such rare plants as
mortals had ever seen” (1991: 18) and uses his figure as a liaison between the history and
fiction. When John Tradescant meets Jordan, he tells the boy about his journeys to unknown
lands,
he [tells] him stories of rocks sprung out of the ocean, the only land as far as the eye
could see, and no life on that land but screaming birds. He [says] that the sea is so
vast no one will ever finish sailing it. That every mapped-out journey contains
another journey hidden in its lines” (ibid. 18).
It is a breaking point since at this moment Jordan becomes fascinated by travels; here also
the reader is slowly driven into the world of fantasy. The uniqueness of the book is based on
the moment when the history meets with magic and when they start to fuse as if they were
designed to create an idiosyncratic unity. The real life of John Tradescant is shrewdly used
by Winterson to introduce an invisible passage between two worlds. The lulled reader is
slowly moving from the restricted and linear reality to the endless universe unlimited by the
hands of the watch. S/he is swung till the moment s/he completely loses the feeling of reality.
Jordan’s travels introduce the break with conventionality and predictability. His
journeys become the central part of the book and the reason for the confusion and
bafflement of the reader. From this moment on, time and space have no meaning and their
role becomes degraded. As Jordan says:
thinking about time is like turning the globe round and round recognizing that all
journeys exist simultaneously, that to be in one place is not to deny the existence of
another, even though that other place is not to deny the existence of another, even
though that other place cannot be felt or seen, or unusual criteria for belief (ibid.
99).
Winterson emphasises multiplicity of places, simultaneity of events and parallelism of lives.

Every moment is equal and every place possible to be visited, therefore, the notions of time
and space are relative. People use calendars and clocks to measure time but in fact time is
untraceable and it should not be treated as something physical. Similarly, it can be assumed
that people usually acknowledge only places which they know or have managed to explore.
Everything that goes beyond human cognition is discarded or regarded as irrational and
thusly impossible to be real. However, Winterson breaks with this convention trying to prove
that there exist various dimensions which overlap and are linked together. She shows it by
telling the stories which balance between what is called reality and fantasy. As Onega says:
“[t]he fact that Jordan can cross the boundary separating the world of common day from the
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world of fantasy suggests the complementarity and reversibility of the real and unreal, of the
imagined and the actually lived” (2006: 77). Since Winterson does not want to determine
time or places visited by Jordan she decides to blur the line between them.
What is more, the writer recalls Grimm brothers’ fairytale The Twelve Dancing
Princesses, thereby emphasising the infinity of time and the universe and the plurality of
selves. The plurality of I indicates the possibility of existence in different dimensions located
on the spiral time axis. As Merja Makinen suggests, Jordan’s journeys are timeless which
indicates the existence of various perceptions and more than one universal truth. “[T]he
sense of time within the novel challenges traditional notions of linearity and of distinctions
between past and present and future” (Makinen 2005: 106), therefore, simultaneity of life
appears to be nothing out of ordinary. During his journeys, Jordan proves the correlation
between binary oppositions and seemingly fragmented parts of the story. While travelling
across various places he wants to find a dancer who is the youngest of the Twelve Dancing
Princesses. The boy is intrigued by Fortunata who turns out to be the reflection of his desires
and needs. As Onega claims: “the young man has already intuited that the eerie dancer he is
looking for might not be a different person, but his own anima, the projection of his soul or
spirit” (2006: 92). Figures of both Jordan and Fortunata represent and symbolise the
nonlinearity of time: “[t]he spiraling figure cast by Fortunata […] symbolizes this movement,
which is compared by Jordan to the number eight, the symbol of infinite. Jordan’s ‘secret’
journey also takes this form, since it is both circular and intertwined with his physical
journeys to remote lands” (ibid. 99) Fortunata becomes the symbol of detachment from the
earthy world and the escape from the bodily prison, which is the reason for human limits
and deficiencies. The girl is able to “free the spirit, a much more ethereal, light, unobservable
part of the individual” (Arostegui 2008: 186) and go far beyond the visible or measurable.
If we follow the presumption that the man is limited only by his corporeality and that
by casting it out he would be fully free to comprehend the real nature of being, how should
be understood the word real? What can be called reality if the notions of time and space
cannot be defined? Winterson puts emphasis on this aspect already in the epigraph of Sexing
the Cherry: “The Hopi, an Indian tribe, have a language as sophisticated as ours, but no
tenses for past, present and future. The division does not exist. What does this say about
time? […] What does this say about the reality of the world?” (1991). I contend that reality is
not stable but changeable depending on how an individual wants to perceive it. Sinkinson
propounds the similar view and claims that “reality is not an autonomous phenomenon, but
totally dependent upon the observer” (1999: 89). We create reality which in fact is only a
fleeting delusion and a single moment in our time-space travel. As Jordan explains:
The future and the present and the past exist only in our minds, and from a distance
the borders of each shrink and fade like the borders of hostile countries seen from a
floating city in the sky. The river runs from one country to another without stopping.
And even the most solid of things and the most real, the best-loved and the well-
known, are only hand-shadows on the wall. Empty space and points of light
(Winterson 1991: 167).
It is clear from the above that reality is something undefined and subjective. It goes beyond
our senses, reason and logic, therefore, it will always remain an everyday experienced
mystery.
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Sexing the Cherry is the twofold journey, one back in time to the 17th century London
and the other one to the places which seem to resemble projections of imagination. In this
journey, time is like an open boundary – unlimited and unmeasured. What is more,
analysing given arguments, one may conclude that there is no such a thing as time; there is
only an abstract notion which symbolizes transitoriness. Winterson tries to show that time
is not specified and only imagination may restrict our dreams. Thus, she loses chronology
and allows her readers to move back in time and find the magic places out of this world. By
many people Sexing the Cherry may be considered as the story about time with no time, “no
beginning, no middle [and] no end” (Vonnegut 1969: 88). But it must be remembered that
“what we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time”
(ibid. 88) and this is what can be found in Sexing the Cherry.
References
1. Ágota M., 2010, “Time interrelations and metamorphosed realities in Jeanette

Winterson’s
2. Sexing the Cherry”, Cluj Napoca: 13thThransylvanian Students’ Scientific
Conference, available at http://etdk.adatbank.transindex.ro/pdf/engl_marton.pdf
[date of access: 29.12.2016].
3. Andermahr S., 2008, Jeanette Winterson, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Asensio Aróstegui, M. del Mar., 2008, Recurrent Structural and Thematic Traits in
Jeanette
5. Winterson’s The Passion and Sexing the Cherry: Time, Space and the Construction
of
6. Identity, Zaragoza: Universidad de La Rioja.
7. Frankova, M., 2000, “The Mercurial Time of Jeanette Winterson’s Prose”, available
at http://www.phil.muni.cz/plonedata/wkaa/BSE/BSE_2000-
26_Scan/BSE_26_05.pdf [date of access: 28.12.2016].
8. Front S., 2009, Transgressin Boundaries in Jeanette Winterson’s Fiction,
Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
9. Hassan I., 1997, “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism”, Postmodern American
Poetry: A
10. Norton Anthology, ed. Paula Geyh, New York: Norton, 586-593.
11. Makinen M., 2005, The Novels of Jeanette Winterson. Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire,
12. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
13. Onega S., 2006, Jeanette Winterson. Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press.
14. Sinkinson D. L., 1999, “Shadows, signs, wonders’: Paracelsus, Synchronicity and the
New
15. Age of Gut Symmetries”, Sponsored by Demons. The Art of Jeanette Winterson, eds.
H. Bengston, Odense: Scholars’ Press, 89.
16. Smethurst P., 2000, The Postmodern Chrronotope: Reading Space and Time in
Contemporary Fiction, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi.
17. Sönmez J-M. M., M. Ö. Kılıç (ed.), 2009, Winterson Narrating Time and Space,
Newcastle:
250
18. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

19. Vonnegut K., 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five, New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour
Lawrence.
20. Winterson J., 1991, Sexing the Cherry. New York: Vintage.
21. Winterson J., 2012, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, New York: Grove
Press.
251
READING THE ‘SUMMER PALACE CULTURE’ IN THREE INTERIOR ITEM:
A RESEARCH STUDY FROM İSTANBUL
Merve Karaoğlu
If the word “saray” (palace) is used alone in the Ottoman Empire, it means only the
Sultan’s house and has the ‘place of government’ meaning as well as the ‘house’. In fact, the
Ottoman Palace has a house-government structure. It also means magnificent houses of rich
people and a structure in construction typology89.
The most important and magnificent palaces of the Ottoman Empire were built in
Istanbul being the capital of that time. After the conquest, Mehmet the Conqueror had firstly
the Old Palace (Saray-ı Atîk) in Istanbul where Istanbul University is situated today and
then New Palace (Saray-ı Cedîd-i Âmire or Saray-ı Hümayun) next to the city and
dominating Marmara Sea and Bosporus built. This palace known as Topkapı Palace today
became an official house of Ottoman sultans until the middle of the 19th century. This palace
is combining Eastern and Western cultures and emerging a new perspective is an expression
of Ottoman Empire and palace organization in architecture. Some additions or changes were
applied to the palace complex in different periods by padishahs. Even if padishahs didn’t
reside in Topkapı Palace after Dolmabahçe Palace was built, that palace never lost its
importance90. In this regard, the places including generally big green areas, observation
hills, coasts or some of these characteristics for palaces and pavilions where we can identify
as elegant governing structures of the Ottoman period were preferred and the governing
structures were constructed in these parts. The green areas, parks and urban fabrics were
well-kept and widened thanks to these structures and their content and liveliness. For this
reason, recreation areas have been long-lived, not short-lived. Their popularity increased or
decreased according to the pleasures of that time and development direction of the city.
Although they kept their importance in city life generally until the early 20th century, other
facilities occupied those places in the recent times. The recreation areas Küplüce, Ayazma,
Yakacık, Göztepe, Çamlıcalar, Alemdağı, Fikirtepesi, Nakkaştepe, Kalıkbayırı, Yuşa in the
Golden Horn and Ermeni Tepesi, Naip Baba Tepesi in Rumelia side resemble Ihlamur
recreation area which will be researched in terms of characteristics in this study91.
89 Nicole Kançal Ferrari, Turkish-Ottoman Palace Literature (From 12th to 20th Centuries), Türkiye Araştırmaları
Literatür Dergisi, 205
90 Kançal Ferrari, Turkish-Ottoman Palace Literature (From 12th to 20th Centuries), 212
91 Hilal Alper Turgut,Hasan Yılmaz, A General Overview of the Development of Turkish Gardens Throughout the History,
Alatoo Academic Studies, 28

252
Part 3 Merve Karaoğlu Reading the ‘Summer Palace…
Figure 1-2. Topkapı Palace [http://www.topkapisarayi.gov.tr/tr, accessed

20.04.2016, 15.30]
If we give a dictionary definition, we can say that the places where Ottoman padishahs
resided permanently with harem, Enderun teams and a big guards unit are defined as palace
and that the structures they resided temporarily and used for the short visits out of palaces
can be defined as pavilion92. The pavilions having characteristics of dwellings where
emperors and country owners defended with the walls and castles to protect against attacks
which will be carried out by enemies and native population got rid of hard and military
characteristics in unproductive and regression periods of Ottoman Empire and turned into
the places where people spent nice and enjoyable time mostly to have a rest and hunt93. With
the westernization period, traditional-classical architectural perspective started to change
and next period styles became easily legible in those pavilions and palaces. Western effects
in works which were built especially in Tulip Period showed itself primarily in decoration
field and some elements, cartridges, S and C curves, acanthus, bouquet vases or fruit bowl
patterns that Turkish art wasn’t acquainted were used in architecture94.
European Neo-Classical style emerging in the late 18th century in Turkish Baroque
Architecture and lasting until the middle of 19th century has an important role in
westernization period Ottoman art. The foreign architects as W.J. Smith, G.Fossati,
A.Vallaury, R.D’Aranco and Jasmund coming from Europe to the country became effective
within the scope of innovation efforts for that style. That style compiling freely from different
periods of Classical Greek-Rome, Renaissance and French empire styles was used widely in
Ottoman art environment in 19th century. That style had an important role in attribution of
characteristics of ever-developing districts especially in northern zones of Golden Horn.
Dolmabahçe Palace (1853-55), Ihlamur Pavilion (1853), Göksu Pavilion (1856), Beylerbeyi
Palace (1865), Ragıp Paşa Kiosk are some of these characteristic examples. It is also possible
to see the effects showing Art Nouveau and Orientalist tendency in the works of art from the
late 19th century95. Indoors of pavilions and palaces were furnished by the furnitures
92 Pelin Yiğit , A Study of Landscaping Values of the Ihlamur Summer Palace Throughout History, İstanbul Technical
University, Graduate School of Science, Master’s Thesis, 49
93 Aşire Devrim İşbecer, The Research From The Point of Landscape Architecture of the Historic Palaces and Pavilions
Gardens Attached to the Department of National Palaces in Istanbul, İstanbul Technical University, Graduate School of
Science, Master’s Thesis, 5
94 Ahmet Ali Bayhan, The Reflection of Westernization Process on Middle East and Africa in Otooman Period: Examples
from Egypt and Israel, 25-26

95 Bayhan, The Reflection of Westernization Process on Middle East and Africa in Otooman Period: Examples from Egypt
and Israel, 25-26

253
brought from different countries and enriched by present ceramic vases, paintings, clocks
and candlesticks96.
Figure 3. Dolmabahçe Palace [http://nalanyilmaz.blogspot.com.tr, accessed

20.04.2016, 15.30]
Figure 4.Beylerbeyi Palace [https://tr.wikipedia.org, accessed 20.04.2016, 15.30]
Ihlamur Pavilions
Ihlamur Pavilions mentioned in this study composed of two structures built into a
recreation area in Ihlamur Valley known with the name “Hacı Hüseyin Yards” situated
between Beşiktaş-Yıldız-Nişantaşı districts. The recreation area turned into a “Hasbahçe”
(Private Garden of the Sultan) belonging to a padishah in the period of Sultan Ahmed III
drew attention also in the periods of Sultan Abdülhamid I (1774-1789) and Sultan Selim III
(1789-1807). As soon as Sultan Abdülmecid (1839-1861) came to the throne of Ottoman
Empire, the pavilions started to be built. Two structures situated in a wooded 24.724 m²-
area limited by high boundary walls from place to place and ajour casting door and bars in
some parts were also sometimes called as “Nüzhetiye” from 1849-1855 when they were
built97.
96Süleyman Özkan, Türkiye’deki Özel Koleksiyonların Günümüze Etkileri, Tarih Okulu, 3

97General Secreteria of TBMM- National Palaces Website,
http://www.millisaraylar.gov.tr/portalmain/Palaces.aspx?SarayId=6, accessed March 13, 2016, 17.05
254
Figure 5-6. Garden where Ihlamur Pavilions situated [Karaoğlu Photo Archive,
March 2016]
Two structures - first one of them was called as “Maiyet”(Cortege) while the second
one named as “Merasim”(Ceremony) that built with limestone construction material 98- are
having an appearance of Dolmabahçe Palace and both situated in the same garden, in the
same period. Cortege Summer Palace used by the cortege and sometimes harem of padishah
is a simple but traditional two-storey structure with the corner rooms opening to the middle
of the hall. The walls in the rooms of Cortege Summer Palace were covered using colorful
stucco method appearing like marbles99.
98 Ihlamur Pavilions Visitor’s Tour Text, April 2016, 2

99 Website, ‘National Palaces’
255
Figure 7. Maiyet (Cortege) Summer Palace [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March 2016]
Figure 8-9. Maiyet Summer Palace facade details [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March
2016]
Ceremony Summer Palace or Ihlamur Pavilion being the main structure is a simple
planned single storey face stoned building formed of two saloons and an entrance hall
situated onto a high subbasement. In spite of that, it has an exaggerated Neo-Baroque
ornament and a flamboyant design composed of plastic girland, oyster shell, vase, bunch etc.
patterns accompanying double-return stairs and a balcony on its front. It has the plan
characteristics of the Classical Turkish House Type with its side doors opening to the hall
known as Hall of Mirrors. The indoors, especially saloon reserved for the sultan were
decorated intensively with Neo-Baroque style by using gold foil, stuka (colorful and
patterned plaster), peinture, glass and metal technics100.
Figure 10. Merasim (Ceremony) Summer Palace [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March
2016]
Figure 11-12-13. Merasim Summer Palace facade details [Karaoğlu Photo Archive,
March 2016]
The furnaces and braziers were used for heating mostly in Ottoman palaces until the
19th century and the furnaces used for heating were also evaluated as a work of art in
architecture. The unique tiles used in wall decorations of Ottoman palace structures were
used also in furnace surfaces and range hoods 101. After the second half of the nineteenth
century, it is seen that they found some solutions to the heating problem of the palaces with
a and pavilions built with a western perspective. The fireplaces and heating stoves were used
in accordance with the intended purpose and heating need of the sites 102. Three porcelains
branded English Copeland fireplaces being same as one another were situated in three sites
of Ceremony Summer Palace103. The vases on the fireplaces were ordered with the fireplaces
branded Copeland and they had same patterns104. The herb patterns were preferred on the
fireplaces, not figured patterns as in interior-wide. Those herb patterns were tulips, roses,
cloves, grapes, pomegranates, pears and leaves.
100 Afife Batur, Royal Lodges and Pavilions in Istanbul, Skylife, 68

101 Heating Devices in the National Palaces, A Publication of The TBMM The Department of National Palaces, 1998,
İstanbul, Publication Number:20, 7
102 ‘Heating Devices in the National Palaces’, 9-10
103 ‘Heating Devices in the National Palaces’, 18
104 Visitor’s Tour Text, 2
256
Figure 14. Fireplace from the Hall of Mirrors [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March
2016]
Figure 15-16. Fireplaces details [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March 2016]
The innovations and westernization movements starting with Tulip Period (1718-
1730) in Ottoman Empire gained an official meaning with the announcement of Imperial
Edict of Reorganization in 1839 and many scientific innovations and technological
developments in Europe were applied in the Empire. It was seen that the developments of
19th century influenced the subject of the illumination of sites and that the structures of the
management like palaces were illuminated by coal gas system as in Europe. The illumination
with coal gas gave its place to the electricity with the scientific revolutions in later times. The
culture of crystal embroidery and chandelier works became widespread thanks to the
technological developments in that century. We can see that crystal chandeliers and
candlesticks were exported notably from England and the countries the empire was in
business connection to Ottoman Empire105. It is possible to find not only the most striking
examples of crystal chandeliers in Dolmabahçe Palace but also the examples combining the
bronze and crystal materials. Ihlamur Pavilions includes the most elegant examples of these
types of chandeliers106. The illuminating element in Reception Room on the left of the hall
is one of typical elements of the period. There are lots of crystals on this five-armed
illumination element produced of cast iron and used by hanging with chain. It is seen that
the lamps and crystal bowls serving as protecting are different from each other since the
crystal pieces have been renewed in the course of time. The body part which is considered
as bronze before is exhibited as gold painted today as a result of various processes.
105 Chandeliers and Lamps in the National Palaces, A Publication of The TBMM The Department of National Palaces,
1998, Publication Number.19, İstanbul, 7-13
106 ‘Chandeliers and Lamps in the National Palaces’, 19
257
Figure 17-18. Chandelier [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March 2016]
The illuminating element in the room on the left side of the hall is made of cast iron
body as three-armed in proportion to the dimensions of the site. There aren’t any crystals
on its body. However the keepers in the form of a bowl preserving the lamp are made of
crystal and there is a glob in the middle of it to provide a homogeneous illumination. The
patterns in the form of C under the body and acanthus leaves forming upper liaison points
represent the design style of the period.
Figure 19. Chandelier [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March 2016]

Figure 20-21. Chandelier details [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March 2016]
Baroque, Rococo and Empire arts formed by West combined with the regional
characters in 19th century and they emerged a new style named Turkish Rococo. The usage
of deep herb patterns in ceiling, wall and corner decorations in palaces and pavilions was
started. Those herb decorations used intensively in Turkish Art can be observed in three
groups:
✓ Fancy herbs and flowers from stylized animal forms. These patterns
coming from totem source are turned into the stylized herb forms as leaf, curl, branch
etc. later,
✓ Stylized herbs coming from herb source,
258
✓ Natural or tangible herbs (naturalist)107.

We can easily see that light-shaded flowers, leaves and fruits are tied with a bow-tie
and these are in a vase being a decoration element of French empire style in interior spaces
of Ihlamur pavilions. Also, there are gold foil plaster reliefs, stucco arranged in the form of
a board and attractive hand-drawn decorations in wall and ceiling decorations.
Figure 22-23-24. Interior Ornament Details [Karaoğlu Photo Archive, March

2016]
Emine Saka Akın, Canan Hanoğlu, Interior Space Plaster Decorations in the Architecture of Tokat Traditional Houses,
107
Vakıflar Dergisi, 165

259
Conclusion
It is irrefutable that the tendency has increased to civil architecture after Tulip Period
but instead of new searching, many works have been performed by the blending method of
existing western styles within the limits of traditional culture. When palaces and pavilions
opened to visit today are considered as places where the articles used by the palace people
and collected in time are exhibited, they are important with regard to represent the lifestyle
of the period. These sites are the places where the senses of art changing with the mentioned
styles can be observed in the best way at the same time. Accordingly, it is required to be
responsible and conscious in interventions against the history. Nowadays, Ceremony
Summer Palace of Ihlamur Pavilions is open to visit as a museum and Cortege Summer
Palace is used as a cafeteria. In the structures- that the style details were processed by an
elaborare in interior elements- the furniture, ceilings and walls were restored with various
successful interventions and refunctioned. All works performed to prevent deterioration of
an architecture provides cultural achievements for the future of generations. The aim of this
study is to contribute to this background by reading the structures.
References
1. A Publication of The TBMM The Department of National Palaces, 1998, Chandeliers

and Lamps in the National Palaces, İstanbul, Publication Number.19
2. A Publication of The TBMM The Department of National Palaces, 1998, Heating
Devices in the National Palaces: İstanbul, Publication Number:20
3. Akın E.A., Hanoğlu C., 2013, Vakıflar Dergisi, Interior Space Plaster Decorations in
the Architecture of Tokat Traditional Houses, 40:163-184, avaliable at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267215292_Tokat_Geleneksel_Konut_
Mimarisi'nde_Ic_Mekan_Alci_Suslemeleri_Interior_Space_Plaster_Decorations_
in_the_Architecture_of_Tokat_Traditional_Houses [accessed: 13.03.2016]
4. Batur A., 1998, Skylife, Royal Lodges and Pavilions in Istanbul, 62-71
5. Bayhan A.A., The Reflection of Westernization Process on Middle East and Africa in
Otooman Period: Examples from Egypt and Israel, March 2016, avaliable at
6. http://e-dergi.atauni.edu.tr/ataunigsed/article/view/1025002257/0 [accessed:
09.03.2016]
7. Ferrari N.K., 2009, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, Turkish-Ottoman Palace
Literature (From 12th to 20th Centuries) 7(13): 205-240
8. General Secretaria of TBMM- National Palaces Website,
9. http://www.millisaraylar.gov.tr [accessed: 13.03.2016]
10. Ihlamur Pavilions Visitor’s Tour Text, April 2016, 2-4
11. İşbecer A. D., 2004, The Research From The Point of Landscape Architecture of the
Historic Palaces and Pavilions Gardens Attached to the Department of National
Palaces in Istanbul, İstanbul: İstanbul Technical University, Graduate School of
Science, Master’s Thesis
12. Özkan S., 2010, Tarih Okulu, Türkiye’deki Özel Koleksiyonların Günümüze Etkileri,
Vol.8: 1-17, avaliable at
260
http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/usakjhs/article/view/5000039744/0 [accessed:
09.03.2016]
13. Turgut H.A., Yılmaz H., 2009, Alatoo Academic Studies, A General Overview of the
Development of Turkish Gardens Throughout the History 4(2): 22-30
14. Yiğit P., 2010, A Study of Landscaping Values of the Ihlamur Summer Palace
Throughout History, İstanbul: İstanbul Technical University, Graduate School of
Science, Master’s Thesis
261
This volume contributes valuable insights to the daedalic world of historical analysis;
it elucidates time, conceptualizes space, and explores mobility in an effort to shed light upon
and interweave these three complex paths of scholarship. Political culture, national and
individual identities, collective and personal memory, spatial exploitation, memory
formation and even exploitation along with presentation of historical truth are several of the
issues explored in this collection. Time, mobility, and space are interwoven and analyzed
clearly in various case studies; this fascinating kaleidoscope will provide momentum for
further contemplation.
The cover image: Monika Nowak
IRF Press
Fundacja “Interdisciplinary Research Foundation”
Al. Jerozolimskie, 85/21
02-001 Warsaw, Poland
www.irf-network.org
info@irf-network.org
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THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE 19TH CENTURY MILITARY BUILDINGS

Chapter · May 2018

doctorate thesis View project

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Time, Space and Mobility

PART 1. MEMORY INTERPRETATIONS ......................................................................................... 13

The Memory Space of the German Post-War Generation

The Interpretive Reading of the Space in the Passage of Time

A Narrative of Displacement: The Collective Memory of Few Armenian Clans in Bulgaria

Space Bounded Memory: Palace or Theatre

PART 2. A JOURNEY IN LITERATURE: EXPLORING MEMORY, SPACE AND TIME ................. 72

Geographies of Transition in Post-Communist Romanian Literature: Borders, Heterotopias,

Racial Melancholia and Poetics of (Im)mobility in Dinaw Mengestu’s

The Practicalities of ‘Mapping’ Literature: The Limited/Limiting Space of Portugal

Driving Forces in Literature: Effects of Fusion with the Historical Determinism

Spatial Perception of Rural Pockets and Healthy Urban Regeneration

Temporal Dynamics and Spatial Horizons in Alejandro Morales’ Novel

PART 3. SPACES AND BUILDINGS WITH VIVID MEMORY ....................................................... 142

Designing an (Urban) Interior Space of Commemoration: A Referred Studio

The Architecture of the 19th Century Military Buildings

Views on Sustainability in Built Environment Undergoing Fast Urbanization Processes

Reconfiguring the Lifeworld: Spatial Experience in the Universe of Technical Images

Space/Geography and Time/History in Paul Auster’s Moon Palace: A Heterotopological

Origins: The b o u n d a r y, beyond a physical interpretation – Seeking the o t h e r

Όριον (orion) ~boundary

Ορίζω (orizo) ~ to bind / divide / separate

confine / define / order /specify / distinguish

Ορισμός (orismos) ~ Definition

Όρος (oros) ~ Term, Mountain

Ορίζων (orizon) ~ Horizon

Conceptual models of revitalising boundaries at the Venetian fortress of Heraklion, Crete.

Challenging its primarily physical interpretation, I have been driven in my research

Schematic representation of boundary concept.

World-view as a container of knowledge

One of humanity’s first collective expressions was the development of creation

To Aboriginal people a part of the legacy of the Dreaming Ancestors is in the

Embodied architecture: “involuntary memories” and “eidetic experience”

An impressive architectural experience sensitizes our whole physical and mental

The emptiness of selfhood is not a conceptual theorem, but a principle that is

Final thoughts: The human element

Sociological and psychological outline of the third generation

Time, space and mobility in Tanja Dückers’ Himmelskörper

The relationship between Spatiality and Temporality has different kind of

3 Syracuse, Colony of Greeks, located in Sicily, in the south of Italy.

chart, or a catalogue, or a dictionary. But this catalogue, lying somewhere between

emperors". He is remembered as an important stoic philosopher, author Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, Memories.

universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers.

1. Agnello G., 1952, L’Architettura bizantina in Sicilia, Firenze

9. Rossi A., 1981, A Scientific Autobiography, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT

History, Structure and Archaeographic Specifics of the Manuscript

Family History, Micro-History, and Migrations

Artin Sarkissyan was working as an assistant in the villages around Malkara.

Karlovo after the Chirpan earthquake (1928).

Immigration Strategies: a Socio-Demographical Analysis

Migrations in the Clan’s Collective Memory

Dr. Melkonyan's manuscript is an exception in the practice of Armenians in Bulgaria.

The Manuscript in “Diasporic Social Field”

1. Chiang Ch.-Y., 2010, “Diasporic Theorizing Paradigm on Cultural Identity”,

9. Ovnanyan S. V., 1972, Armeno-balgarski istoricheski vrazki i armenskite kolonii v

Dr. Magardich Melkonyan (1922-2009). Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.

The manuscript. Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.

Stepan Melkonyan (1885-1966). Source: Private archive of Artin Garabedyan.