Twenty Years of Thinking about Traumascapes

Abstract

I have been researching and writing about traumascapes for the past two decades. The central argument guiding my research is simple: physical sites of violence and loss are much more than mere backdrops to the traumatic events that take place in their soil. They are deeply implicated in individual and collective processes of grieving, remembering, andmeaning-making.Ideployanautoethnographicapproach in this paper, charting my progression through key ideas informingmyresearch,andexploringindepththedominance of the memorialisation trope in the majority of sustained engagementswithplacesoftrauma.I reflecton severalrecent cultural shifts that have been instrumental in changing our understanding of..