Narracje o świeżej traumie. Upamiętnianie ataków terrorystycznych w krajobrazie codziennym miast
Recent Trauma Narratives: Commemorating Terrorist Attacks in Everyday Cityscape

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary city incidentally becomes a non-accidental target of acts violating the primary sense of security and safety. The fundamental assumptions about social and interpersonal interactions that guarantee social life are severely disturbed. These events, primarily the ones related to terrorist attacks, leave in social memory traces associated with everyday places scattered in urban landscape. Should the trace of a catastrophe be preserved and exhibited, or should it be interpreted to give a new meaning to endangered places? What significance can one attribute to trauma narratives in everyday landscape? To what extent can spatial and ephemeral narratives related to dramatic events address the social need of coping with trauma and constructing a new approach to a given place? Spontaneous and official commemorative forms are created in response to terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.S.A. Official memorials are created over just a few years and sometimes even one year, which corresponds to a natural closure of mourning process leading to the acceptance of loss and reconstructing life. However, other representations – spontaneous memorials created in the aftermath of attacks, composed of objects left in urban space to honour victims and survivors – become an important element of collective mourning ritual and constitute a transition from informal commemoration to top-down representations. The article discusses how different forms of trauma narratives constructed in urban space can enhance trauma recovery.

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