final papers (unedited)
1.
Floodplain processes and development
Submitted to: Professor J. Desloges
Submitted on: Saturday, 14 April 2007
Introduction
Floodplains are an integral component of fluvial systems, characterized by the interplay of physical, chemical and biological processes over variable spatial and temporal scales. Formed by primarily from a combination of within-channel and overbank deposits (Knighton, 1998), floodplains are ecologically significant natural areas of sediment storage. Furthermore, the recognition of floodplains as an invaluable socio-economic resource supports ongoing interest in its conservation and development. Watershed management must, therefore, address the equally important and interdependent objectives outlined to maintain the integrity of natural environment systems while supporting the demands of human society. Consequently, any decisions regarding floodplains should thoroughly consider the implications and necessity for both conservation and development. Despite the inherent value of floodplains, there exists a general consensus that the understanding of their architecture and processes of formation has been limited until recently, as previous research efforts had focused on in-channel processes. This paper aims to review the current understanding of these processes as they relate to the extent to which they have been altered as a result of floodplain development, and the impact of various efforts to reverse adverse effects through rehabilitation efforts. A multidisciplinary investigative approach is recommended, with particular attention given to the necessary recognition of floodplain heterogeneity and connectivity through its physical construction that relates directly to any preliminary assessment for activities on the floodplain that may permanently change its character. Recent scientific studies examining the sustainability of human activities in a range of floodplains of interest will be discussed, followed by a review of current recommendations. In essence, the distinctive processes by which floodplains are formed demands thorough consideration of its subsequent ecological diversity and its cooperative management. Although these comprehensive assessments will invariably require remarkable resources including time and labour to complete, they are necessary for the long-term effective biodiversity conservation of floodplains. (Looy et al, 2006) Moreover, these preventative measures outweigh the short-term, temporary socioeconomic gains.
Floodplain processes and sustainability
Floodplains are incredibly dynamic albeit sensitive ecotones. As transitional environments between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, floodplains are characterized by high habitat heterogeneity that is strongly associated with diverse and unique species. Their modes of construction and evolution are influenced by the change of one or the cumulative effects of three primary conditions including the rate of sediment supply, the associated transportability of sediment materials in relation to the energy environment of flow regime and the role of topography in the accumulation of sedimentary units (Knighton, 1998). Nanson and Croke (1992) outlined a classification system identifying three major types of floodplains characterized by the related stream power. In their definition of a genetic floodplain, this fluvial feature is further related to the contemporary climatic and hydrological conditions of the parent stream. This describes a strong relationship between floodplain development and its immediate environment, establishing the significance of hydrologic connectivity to its construction and ongoing natural modification. Similarly, adverse changes to the sensitive natural character of floodplains are strongly influenced development, in particular, the pressures to sustain human populations. The identification of contemporary conditions in the definition of floodplains is an important one, as it considers and accommodates the external changes that will engender successive dynamic genetic floodplains that reflect the new conditions. A study conducted by Brown and Keough (1992) highlights the influential effects of climatic and anthropogenic change leading to significant increases in fine sediment supply to the low-energy river systems in the English Midlands. As a result, the dominant mode of floodplain construction reflected these new conditions by emphasizing overbank deposition over the more prominent within-channel sedimentation process before. There are various ways by which sediment accumulates on floodplains, one of which includes channel bank accretion by relatively rapid and dynamic point bar growths and translations, braid bar bank attachment or lateral bar expansion. (Alexander et al, 1999) In addition, sediment fallout from overbank flow, sediment accumulation by differential vegetative cover on the landscape and inputs from erosional agents are also important contributors. A reflection of the diverse series of differential processes that shapes these landscapes, floodplains offer distinctive ecological niches within their respective watersheds and even within single reaches of adjacent channels. Numerous studies have confirmed the significance these physically heterogeneous and complex depositional or functional units to biodiversity. (Looy et al, 2006, Chovanec et al, 2003, Stanford et al, 1993) It is equally imperative then to recognize the floodplain’s integral function in the watershed and the hydrological connectivity that forms networks of floodplain patches and allows for the interaction between the adjacent channel and its resultant floodplain landscape. It is by connectivity that conditions in floodplain-river ecosystems are supported and modified. Hydrological connectivity describes the relational transfer of flows between the channel and the spatially differentiated components of the floodplain are strongly associated with the patterns of biodiversity established in the landscape. In addition, the European Commission’s Water Framework Directive (WFD) has recommended the maintenance of habitat connectivity for migrating organisms.
Sustainable conservation of such ecologically significant features requires broad-based knowledge of basic geomorphological processes and in relation to external influences at a range of scales. Should such comprehensive surveys of the floodplain landscape be incomplete or neglected, as past development projects have recorded, fragmentation results, isolating tracts of reactive floodplain surfaces, particularly through the construction of engineering structures such as levees. (Thoms, 2003) The subsequent alteration of the character of the floodplain surface affects the ecology that it supports adversely, often with resulting in severe and detrimental degradation of the environment. A common example of negative impact on floodplains results from vegetation clearance as a result of land use changes for agricultural or urban development. Reduction or elimination of vegetative cover modifies the original surface roughness of the landscape and influences the access and retention of organic materials such as carbon. Studies have noted that these modifications have increasing significance along reaches with relatively smaller flood events due to the processes by which the amount and textures of sediment and associated organic materials accrete on floodplains. Thus, increasingly more extensive development exacerbates changes to lateral connectivity in floodplain-river systems by altering the natural hydrological pattern of floodplain inundation, in addition, through land use changes that reduce the reactive floodplain surfaces. These relationships must be considered in relation to rehabilitation efforts and future plans for sustainable development.
Evaluation of the extent of development on floodplains
The selected investigations of certain physical, biological and chemical indicators can offer valuable prognosis of the extent of human development on floodplains. Under the WFD for instance, the development and application of practical bioindication procedures has been recognized to be instrumental to the assessment of river reaches for extensive spatial ranges from individual sites to include significant parts of catchment areas. (Chovanec et al, 2004) The results from two particular studies exemplify these claims. Firstly, from an ecological perspective, the employment of the Odonate Habitat Index (OHI) to the assessment of river-floodplain systems has been instrumental to ongoing monitoring of the physical properties and ecological integrity of terrestrial and aquatic interfaces. Dragonflies were selected as the principal indicator for floodplain surveys due to their highly specific habitat requirements for reproductive and survival purposes. These requirements coincide with the extensive range of microhabitats engendered by differential floodplain processes that continually modify the dynamic convergence of aquifer-riverine components. The capability of the OHI to operate across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales coincides with requirements supported by research organizations such as the WFD for the basis of sound environmental monitoring, thus, aids to affirm or warn against rapid degradation of the physical heterogeneity of floodplains in question. One of many study areas of interest includes reaches of the Danube River in Austria, which carries an extended history of development since its regulation in the nineteenth century, followed by the construction of a total of ten dams for hydroelectric purposes from the early 1950s to present day. (Humpesch, 1992) The culmination of these preventative and developmental activities resulted in fragmentation with far-reaching implications for sustainability. By comparing the OHI results before and after rehabilitation efforts in the study areas gives an indication of the success of such measures. Notably, in each study area, a range of OHI values was recorded, many with a prominent difference between the maximum and minimum OHI. Similarly, while the mean OHI for the entire Austrian stretch of the Danube, was determined to be 2.89, the values ranged from 1.10 to 4.01. (Chovanec et al, 2004) By this assessment, the results of the study conducted empirically illustrated the heterogeneity across a floodplain and emphasizes that an overall assessment of any study area of this nature would not be appropriate. In the accompanying discussion, the authors recommended additional surveys of other bioindicator groups that could offer invaluable perspective by extending the thoroughness of mapping specific connectivity patterns. Furthermore, the comparison of OHI values, before and after the implementation of rehabilitation efforts, can assess the viability of such projects over time.
In a second study conducted by Thoms (2003), the examination of the influence of hydrological connections on the potential exchange of dissolved organic carbon between a large floodplain to its river channel in Australia highlights the effects of land and water resource developments on these exchanges. As observed in the studies along the Danube, prolonged floodplain development has significantly altered the spatial and temporal patterns of hydrological characteristics, significantly reducing the magnitude, frequency and duration of flooding events. Moreover, the patterns of flood events relate to the degree by which floodplain soil nutrient concentrations are elevated (Ogden and Thoms, 2002), which corresponds to the response of vegetation growth, an indicator of habitat sustainability as it relates to overall ecological integrity. (VanOorschot et al, 1998) To estimate the extent of water resources and floodplain development on the ecosystem, a simple dissolved organic carbon budget was derived for two conditions such that useful comparisons could be made. The first described a natural flow scenario, a reference condition to the floodplain before development, while the second described the current flow scenario calculated based on conditions prevailing in 2000. (Thoms, 2003) Results indicated that geomorphological unit distribution differed between upstream and downstream reaches of the floodplain of interest and that greater diversity of these units were found upstream. Density and diversity of morphological units increased the potential supply of dissolved organic carbon stored in the sediments upon release upon wetting. Based on the modelled data from the study, projection of current flow conditions resulted in a reduction of approximately 8000 tonnes of dissolved organic carbon available in comparison with the referential natural flow condition. Thus, the loss of reactive floodplain surfaces, of up to 23% lost in upper reaches due to the construction of levee banks and water storages (Thoms, 2003), and associated morphological units has been detrimental. In addition, the concentration of large-scale overland flows into constructed floodplain channels completely alters and even prevents the natural floodplain processes of floodwater and sediment dispersal across the landscape. Two important conclusions have been emphasized through this study. The application of interdisciplinary approaches to study complex ecosystems is crucial and viable. Through the evaluation of dissolved organic carbon proposed effectively demonstrated the consideration of floodplain connectivity from hydrological, physical and ecological perspectives. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of the maintenance of appropriate hydrological regimes as they facilitate natural biological, chemical and physical processes in floodplain construction.
Recommendations and conclusion
The negative effects of development towards the decrease of spatial diversity across floodplains have been confirmed. Several noteworthy recommendations have been proposed with the acknowledgement of the scale of development that will continue to persist in relation to the importance of preserving floodplain ecology. First, consideration for dynamic modelling to address nonstationary physical conditions is integral to floodplain management, (Olsen et al, 2000) such that predictions can be made for conditions before and during development projects. In addition, dynamic models would be better suited to accommodate other external factors influencing changes to floodplain processes such as climate change. Secondly, the advantages of multidisciplinary approaches in addressing inadequate analysis offered by previous models of investigation have been emphasized extensively. Given the complex nature of floodplain processes and its spatially diverse ecology, it is imperative to identify the underlying interactions at varying scales of investigation derived from multiple perspectives. Consequently, a holistic review of floodplains will aid in its management. From a conservation perspective, the results presented by scientific studies highlights the differences between geomorphological features across spatial ranges. It is possible, then, to assign conservation status to floodplain areas of greater ecological significance and under greater risk of being lost to the effects of development. From a land management perspective, restricted development on such ecologically significant and sensitive areas would be instrumental to maintaining the integrity of entire floodplain landscapes. Finally, a well-balanced evaluation of floodplains requires consideration for interactions across entire watersheds within which the floodplain is situated. Appreciation for landscape scale interactions emphasizes the importance of hyphoric zones as they relate to the connectivity of ecosystem subunits. Further research into floodplain relationships on multiple spatial and temporal scales is imperative to the maintenance of these ecologically significant landscapes in light of increasing trends in development.
References
Alexander, J., Marriott, S., 1999. Floodplains: Interdisciplinary approaches: Introduction. London: The Geological Society, 1-11.
Brown, A., Keough, M., 1992. Holocene floodplain metamorphosis in the Midlands, United Kingdom. Geomorphology 4, 433-45.
Chovanec, A., Waringer, J., Raab, R., Laister, G., 2004. Lateral connectivity of a fragmented large river system: assessment on a macroscale by dragonfly surveys (Insecta: Odonata). Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 14, 163-178.
Humpesch U., 1992. Ecosystem study altenwörth: impacts of a hydroelectric power-station on the River Danube in Austria. Wien: Austrian National Committee of the International Working Group on Danube Research.
Knighton, D., 1998. Fluvial forms & processes: a new perspective. London: Oxford University Press Incorporated, 141-148.
Looy, K., Honnay, O., Pedroli, B., Muller S., 2006. Order and disorder in the river continuum: the contribution of continuity and connectivity to floodplain meadow biodiversity. Journal of Biogeography 33, 1615-1627.
Nanson, G., Croke, J., 1992. A genetic classification of floodplains. Geomorphology 4, 459-486.
Ogden, R., Thoms, M., 2002. The importance of inundation to floodplain soil fertility in a large semi-arid river. Internationale Vereinigung fur Theoretishce und Angewandte Limnologie 28, 111-115.
Olsen, J., Beling, P., Lambert, J., 2000. Dynamic models for floodplain management. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 126, 167-175.
Petts, G. 1996. Floodplain Processes: Sustaining the ecological integrity of large floodplain rivers. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons Limited, 535-548.
Pizzuto, J., 2002. Effects of dam removal on river form and process. BioScience 52, 683-691.
Stanford, J., Ward, J., 1993. An ecosystem perspective of alluvial rivers: connectivity and the hyporheic corridor. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 12, 48-60.
Thoms, M., 2003. Floodplain-river ecosystems: lateral connections and the implications of human interference. Geomorphology 56, 335-349.
VanOorschot, M., Hayes, M., Strien, I., 1998. The influence of soil desiccation on plant production, nutrient uptake and plant nutrient availability in two French floodplain grasslands. Regulated Rivers: Research and Management 14, 313-327.
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2.
Historicism and postmemory
Submitted to: Professor A. Komaromi
Submitted on: Thursday, 19 April 2007
(Citations are on a separate page, if you are interested, i can email a copy to your address)
Nineteenth century positivism embraced a fundamental epistemological optimism that past histories were knowable, objectively and entirely. The central problem was rooted in the manner time and its associated events, personalities and artefacts were organized into periods. The assertion that such organization was possible implied that by approaching archived history, one could come to terms with its complexities. Memory, which is less resistant to structuralization due to its fragmentary and plural nature, destabilizes the optimism of absolute knowledge. In particular, postmemory, that which results from the inaccessibility of a first-hand experience , effectively challenges and evades attempts towards establishing conclusive historical certainty. Although predicated upon generational distance that becomes more pronounced through the passage of time, postmemory has been recognized for its contribution as an extension to historicism. Indeed, the value of cultural history, drawing upon the memories of ordinary people as legitimate sources, has helped to offer highly intimate perspectives to academic understanding of the past, especially in light of traumatic events that have devastated and claimed innumerable lives. However, by moving away from the totalizing conclusions of historicism, in addition to the removal of subsequent generations from direct recollection of past experiences of the victims, postmemory requires mediation and is engendered through an imaginative investment and creation . It is often through the engagement with material culture that such subjective and created experiences are mediated. Set in post-Holocaust Europe, W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz meticulously considers the contribution of architectural sites and photographic images to the reawakening and intensification of postmemory through a fictitious character’s journey to recover the circumstances that defines his forgotten childhood. In examining Chris Marker’s film La Jetée with the novel, and in reference to selected contemporary studies pertaining, this paper proposes to emphasize the significant, albeit fluid and fragmentary, perspective material culture contributes to the dynamic negotiation between history and postmemory.
The accumulation of the past in built structures and their subsequent role in the mediation of memory is grounded in the dual sense of permanence and the reality of its imminent transformation with time. In relation to the exploration of postmemory, architectural sites function as tropes to aid in the recollection of information. In particular, locations where built spaces have taken on mnemonic signification in commemoration of historical events inscribe the past in the present moment for future visitors. Consideration of built environments bearing historical significance opens venues for indirect engagement with the past when direct means are inaccessible or lost. Moreover, the possibility of multiple readings, that which is derived from archived accounts in relation to the mosaic and non-static interpretations of individuals, recognizes the contingency of totalizing meaning, often undermining intended iconographic features in light of contemporary engagement with such environments. In conversation with the narrator regarding his experiences, Austerlitz remarked “he could never quite shake off thoughts of the agony of leave-taking and the fear of foreign places, although such ideas were not part of architectural history proper”.
Often, investigation of architectural sites highlight the conflict between the attempted portrayal of permanent emblematic displays and the flux of highly subjective readings in relation to the individual and the shifting perspectives of contemporary culture. Austerlitz’s detailed criticism of the construction of grandiose, albeit disappointed structures of fortification exemplify the incongruence of symbol and function. When surrendered to the Germans for the second time in 1940, the fortress of Breendock was transformed into a reception and penal camp for four years, and had been subsequently preserved as a national memorial and a museum of Belgian resistance since its liberation. The narrator’s visit to this particular site offers an account that differs significantly than what is expected from an ideological appropriation of a national portrayal of strength and unity. Indeed, the narrator proceeds to confess his inability to relate the overbearing structure to “anything shaped by human civilization, or even with the silent relics of our prehistory and early history”, and upon further examination of the fortress’ exterior walls, its incomprehensible monstrosity “covered in places by open ulcers with the raw crushed stone erupting from them, encrusted by guano-like droppings and calcareous streaks” elicited the impression of blind violence instead of a timeless testament of reassurance. The narrator’s experience inside the fortress is defined explicitly by the sombre and heavy undercurrent of a past time as he imagines the hardships endured by prisoners once held indefinitely within the fortress walls. The act of imagining requires an extension beyond historical certainty towards the construction of subjective postmemory.
Even more unsettling is the narrator’s realization of the finite capacity of the human mind for retention, implicating the countless details lost in transition from one moment to the next, “lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life”, and similarly, how the world drains itself of unnamed personalities and places “which they themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on”. It is at each point in the telling of Austerlitz’s story where the details are resurrected through his engagement with the environment and its artefacts. One of such places is the Ghetto Museum in Terezín, nearly vacant of visitors by auxiliary circumstances of weather and geography. Upon spending time in museum, limited visitation by its hours of operation, then finding himself outside of its confines, Austerlitz recalls the clarity with which the thought occurred to him that the “(sixty thousand people in the ghetto) had never been taken away afterall, but were still living crammed into those buildings and basements and attics, as if they were incessantly going up and down the stairs, looking out of the windows, […] a silent assembly, filling the entire space occupied by the air”. Memory is especially present in architecture as built spaces carry vestiges of the past that remain at rest or in ruins until they are actively sought for and restored from the fragmented traces of what once was. By remembering the past through the mediation of persistent historical sites through contemporary and individualized perspectives, the dynamic processes of erasure, rediscovery and revisions to our personal and collective pasts are engendered. It is with such ‘advancing stories’ through which individuals and future communities are able to forge new relationships to distant historical events in addition to renewed identities.
Personal and familial material remnants carry traces of memory from the past and embody the very process of their transmission. Every object represents a point of intersection in the fabric of time, inscribing the past in the present, between memory and postmemory, personal remembrance and cultural recollection , thus serving in part as testimony of as past that is continually being modified. Through the access and engagement with multiple points of memory, different temporal and interpretative frames are juxtaposed together, moving towards and away from one another, thus morphing and resisting the formation of definitive conclusions. The photographic image is one of such material remnants in point.
The inscription of history in Chris Marker’s fictional film La Jetée is comparable to the historical basis of Sebald’s story of the fictional character of Austerlitz. Produced in 196 and set in the same decade as Austerlitz, the film carries a memory that relates profoundly to the specific historical moment and when extended, comments on the prevailing historical elements of the twentieth century. Both fictions offer perspectives on the engagement with memory lost as a result of the devastating trauma inflicted by incalculable loss of human life and familiar societal linkages thereafter. Although the stories are fictional constructions, the continual interruption of photographic images to the narrative, integrated into the respective textual and audio accounts, thus functions as an effective vehicle that carries a self-contained historical memory, which serves to destabilize the fictional structures. In essence, the fiction is authenticated by the memory carried, albeit dormant in the photographic image until its subjects are engaged. The image itself represents physical evidence of an experience, destabilized by the continuous unravelling of the present moment, and unsettling as it communicates to its contemporary audience of a death in the future. In light of Roland Barthes’ perspectives on photography, the mages that emerge from traumatic experiences such as wars, and in particular, the active extinction of human lives through genocide, carry the knowledge and the fearful anticipation of the intended victims’ deaths. The punctum contained within the images carry the conflicting sense of liberation from oppressive dehumanizing forces and that of inextinguishable guilt, sorrow and defeat for those lost along the way, the lingering guilt of having somehow survived while others perished. Consequently, the integrated inclusion of photographic images to accompany the narration portrays both creations to resemble documentaries more than works of fiction.
The release of La Jetée in 1962 and the setting of Austerlitz in the late 1960s coincide with a politically significant period of time marked by the tensions of the Cuban missile crisis and the enduring the Cold War, which continually threatened the fragile post-war atmosphere. The expansionist and hegemonic ambitions of social political organizations carried out atrocities at an alarming and global scale, one of which was the Holocaust, an operation that recalls a totalized form of power exercised towards the erasure of an entire race of people. It is this undercurrent of the possibility of re-witnessing the imminent scale of calculated destruction that haunts the photographic stills of the film and lives in the photographs of the novel. In a slow motion viewing of the Berlin cassette titled Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt, Austerlitz’s remark resonates with the narrator’s earlier commentary in Antwerp, in describing an unrecognizable “subterranean world, through the most nightmarish of depths […] to which no human voice (had) ever descended”. The four-second fragment of the cassette in which Austerlitz identifies his mother not only serves to verify her past existence, but captures the realization of the annihilation of life that continues to threaten the present with its non-existence. Similarly in the film, the photographic stills contain a memory in itself that extends beyond the specific subjects captured towards a “transhistorical memory of the gestural life inherent to humanity and a fictive version of the potential extinction of that life by the rigidity of a politics of totality”.
The photographic image can be likened to a museum where time is conserved, collapsed and frozen in a single frame. Once the image is developed, it is simultaneously modified in a relentless process of decay and is a frustrated agent of the preservation and retelling of the circumstances relating to its subjects. In essence, this asserts that the image contains a memory that is beyond and independent from that with it communicates within a subjective interpretation of history, as if our subjective histories were determined by the memory-life of the image itself, carrying and expressing history like architectural sites that house the past. The only sequence of published photographic images made by Austerlitz through his travels reveals the elaborate post-memorial context in which he perceives the past that had been repressed and lost as a result to him since childhood. Walking towards Terezín, he captures the panoramic scene of an ancient petrochemical plant consumed by the settlement of rust, set before the Bohemian mountains with their summits obscured by the low, colourless sky. Austerlitz remarks that the most striking aspect of the location is its emptiness, which he faithfully captures in each frame. The streets and structures that he encounters is devoid of human life, as one is left with only lingering reminders - the abandoned organization of materials into habitable shelters, the painted ordinals of a mathematical language, and finally an inaccessible collection of artefacts assembled behind glass. More significantly, the manner by which the photographs frame Austerlitz’s points of interest reflects his necessary engagement with material culture to remember, that which has been lost with time. His focus on closed doors and barred windows express the obstacles he has encountered throughout his journey. Moreover, even the opening of the points of entry into these symbolic structures may not offer the answers that he seeks.
As the photographic images focus more into specific spaces and the objects that occupy them, there is an interesting juxtaposition of the two final images at the end of the series. In the first, several artefacts are observed through the glass, overlay with images of trees and presumably Austerlitz himself in the reflection of the display window. The multiple layers create a striking melange of unfocused and ghostly impressions, like the disarming drift into a dream or an overdue awakening from past and present. The bridge of textual narrative to the final photograph seems to provide the necessary time for reflection, where a distinct timeless moment of rescue is captured in porcelain and image, “forever just occurring, these ornaments, utensils, and mementoes stranded in the Terezín bazaar, objects that for reasons one could never know had outlived their former owners and survived the process of destruction, so that I could see my own faint shadow image barely perceptible among them”. The reader is thus left is the feeling of the impenetrability of the objects and the created image against the smallest glimmer of hope for an understanding of the history denied to Austerlitz by the trauma of separation from his family. Deconstruction of this impenetrability requires alternatives to historical narratives that re-embrace the spectres of the past to give voice to the injustices and blindness and the wilful forgetfulness of its perpetrators. The personalization of such experiences by subsequent generations by mediation through material culture such as photographic images is one means of preserving while continually incorporating the remembrance of history into contemporary contexts.
In W.G. Sebald’s novel, the central character takes painstaking lengths to reconstruct a path to the circumstances of his forgotten childhood through the essential mediation with material culture. By examining the material remnants, which have survived the past into the present, traumatic historical events can be visually represented in memorial and in a dedicated spatial context where memories can be forged in the present and future. In particular, the fluid nature of architectural sites and photographic images aid in the dynamic negotiation between history and memory, and bridge the generational distance between memory and the construction of postmemory. Although fragmentary, these memories and unstable artefacts are central to our link to the past and will serve as reminders of the human potential for destruction and the realization of such potentials.
Works Cited
Caldicott, Edric and Anne Fuchs. Introduction. Cultural Memory. Edited by Edric Caldicott and Anne Fuchs. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003.
Ffrench, Patrick. “The Memory of the Image in Chris Marker’s La Jetée.” French Studies LIX (2005): 31-37.
Georg Iggers. The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present, Revised Edition. Middletown, 1983.
Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, 1997.
Hirsch, Marianne and Leo Spitzer. “Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender and Transmission (Terezín and Vapniarka Concentration Camps).” Poetics Today 27 (2006): 353-383.
Sebald, W.G. Austerlitz. New York: Random House Incorporated, 2001.
Umbach, Maiken. “Memory and Historicism: Reading Between the Lines of the Built Environment, Germany c.1900.” Representations 88 (2004): 26-54.