The Political Afterlife of Sites of Monumental Destruction : Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York

What happens when a monumental thing is physically destroyed? Is its "life" as a socially significant, presencing thing at an end? Or might the process of destruction work to enhance its symbolic force, mediating work and presencing power? In this book Andrea Connor traces the ‘afterlife’ of two exemplary examples of monumental destruction and their re-investment with cultural value and symbolic significance. In 1993, during the Bosnian war, the Mostar Bridge was completely destroyed. Reconstructed in 2004, as an exact copy of the original, this "new Old Bridge" has assumed an afterlife as an intentional monument to reconciliation. The World Trade Centre, in New York, has also been transformed since its destruction in 2001, as a place of national mourning and remembrance, a symbolic void marking a singular act of terrorism. Using recent work on affect and object agency Connor considers their contested reconfiguration as sites of collective remembering and forgetting in new highly charged political contexts. She argues for a more expansive notion of reconstruction – encompassing not only the material and symbolic afterlife of both things but also their affecting afterlives as they are re-assembled in the present. Provoking a reconsideration of the way monuments and heritage sites, even in their absence, become powerful agents of historical narrativization, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields including international relations, cultural studies, critical heritage studies, and material culture studies. Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- 1. Affecting presence: Memory, agency and the power of monumental things -- Materiality matters -- The spatial actualization of the monumental place -- The agency of memory -- Destruction/reconstruction -- Notes -- References -- 2. Urbicide and the destruction of "bridge-ness" in Mostar -- A soulful object -- Bridge-ness -- Mostar -- Urbicide - re-placing Mostar -- Pedestrian acts -- Temporalizing politics -- Notes -- References -- 3. Afterlife: Anchoring affect/reconstructing "bridge-ness" in Mostar -- Remembering and forgetting -- The politics of heritage reconstruction -- Representational politics -- A material anchor - the emplacement of politics -- Monumental counter-framing -- A cultural asset -- A thickly lived place -- Conclusion: intangible afterlife -- Notes -- References -- 4. Skyscraper dreaming: Monumentality, modernity and the destruction of the Twin Towers -- A hybrid object -- Panoramic views/skyscraper dreaming -- A modern assemblage/assembling modernity -- Vertical monumentality - modern and ancient -- Monumental hubris -- Vulnerability and indeterminacy -- Notes -- References -- 5. Filling the void: Embodying the uncanny space of Ground Zero -- Haunted space -- Heterotopic transformation -- Notes -- References -- 6. Faith in steel: The fragmented afterlife of the Twin Towers -- Introduction: faith in steel -- Tracing authenticity -- Regimes of valuation -- A floating monument -- Arte-factual transformations - collecting 9/11 -- A tactile relic -- A body of evidence -- Conclusion - memorial afterlife -- Notes -- References -- Conclusion: Affecting afterlives -- What can we learn from the afterlife of monumental things? -- Re-placing politics -- Politicizing time/temporalizing politics -- Note In this volume Andrea Connor examines these two sites, physically transformed through acts of cultural destruction and their contested reconfiguration in new, highly politicized contexts.