The value of ruins: Allegories of destruction in Benjamin and Speer
01 Oct 2003-Iss: 6, pp 51-64
TL;DR: Theory of Ruin Value as discussed by the authors explores the theoretical implications of the ruin as it emerged in the work of Walter Benjamin and AlbertSpeer, but in very different guises, in the context of Baroque tragic drama.
Abstract: Introduction: the ruin and the aestheticisation of politicsThis paper seeks to explore some of the theoretical implications of the ruin as it emergedcontemporaneously, but in very different guises, in the work of Walter Benjamin and AlbertSpeer. In Speer’s ‘Theory of Ruin Value’, the aesthetic fragmentation he imagines in the futureruins of his buildings is belied by their continuing ideological totality. Conversely, in the contextof Benjamin’s philosophy of history the ruin provides an emblem, not only of the melancholicworldview presented in Baroque tragic drama, but of allegory as a critical tool for historicalmaterialism. Benjamin’s concept of the ruin, especially as adumbrated in his book The Origin ofGerman Tragic Drama, is valuable because it delves beyond the aesthetic of the ruin as anobject, and reads it as a process, a means of demythifying and stripping away symbolism - ameans of approaching historical truth through reduction, at the expense of romantic aesthetics.For Speer the ruin provides an established conduit to aesthetic affect, a means of adding oraccumulating ‘age value’ not in pursuit of historical truth, but rather a mythological history,supported and authorised by the ruin’s picturesque aesthetic.
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TL;DR: The authors assess a broad selection of the resulting literature and identify several key themes, such as how ruins may be used to critically examine capitalist and state manifestations of power, the way in which ruins may challenge dominant ways of relating to the past, and how they may complicate strategies for practically and ontologically ordering space.
Abstract: Scholarly interest in ruins and derelict spaces has intensified over the last decade. We assess a broad selection of the resulting literature and identify several key themes. We focus on how ruins may be used to critically examine capitalist and state manifestations of power; we consider the way in which ruins may challenge dominant ways of relating to the past; and we look at how ruins may complicate strategies for practically and ontologically ordering space. We speculate about the motivations for this surge of current academic interest, draw out resonances with current trends in geographical thinking, and suggest directions for future research.
231 citations
Cites background from "The value of ruins: Allegories of d..."
...The Baroque imagination cast the ruin more ambiguously, mining its allegorical possibilities while dwelling on the melancholic power of transience and decay (Stead, 2003)....
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...Others have argued that the ruinimage ‘reproduce[s] the viewing subject as a consumer of dereliction’ (Cunningham, 2011) and fosters a passive, neutralized position in relation to the image content, risking what Benjamin diagnosed as the ‘aestheticization of politics’ (Stead, 2003)....
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Dissertation•
01 May 2019
TL;DR: The authors examine how novels, short stories, and life writing set during these years use ruin as a source of active reflection on Irish history and culture, arguing that each author mobilises ruin to intervene in problematic narratives of the past.
Abstract: This thesis analyses forms of ruin within literary representations of Ireland between 1916 and 1945. I examine how novels, short stories, and life writing set during these years use ruin as a source of active reflection on Irish history and culture. The texts in question can be understood as resistant contributions to Irish cultural memory – a term I use to denote the diverse social sites within which remembrance of the past is practiced and developed. I focus on the work of J. G. Farrell (‘Troubles’), Elizabeth Bowen (‘The Last September’, ‘Bowen’s Court’), William Trevor (‘Fools of Fortune’, ‘The Story of Lucy Gault’), Sebastian Barry (‘The Secret Scripture’), Sean O Faolain (‘Midsummer Night Madness’, ‘A Broken World’), and Mairtin O Cadhain (‘Cre na Cille’), arguing that each author mobilises ruin to intervene in problematic narratives of the past. The history in question is firstly Ireland’s revolutionary period and the fate of the Anglo-Irish ‘Big House’ during this time; secondly, the insular and damaged conditions within post-independence statehood; and finally, the pressures placed upon the Free State’s nationalistic insularity by the global ruin of World War II.
I coin the term ‘radical decay’ to describe how fragmentation, damage, and degeneration are deployed in order to resist ingrained cultural values and perceptions of history. Ruins are records of the past characterised by absences and flux, which result in semiotic ambiguity. The writers discussed here embrace this ambiguity to unsettle historical meaning, and so resist calcified practices and manipulative agendas within Irish heritage. Ruin appears as a heterogeneous substance within these texts. It is present in the narratives regarding damaged buildings, including the torched Big Houses of the Ascendancy, as a decaying asylum within the Free State, and in sites of abandonment or neglect in a destitute rural landscape. Ruin is also portrayed as a textual and personal condition. Using radical decay as a conceptual foundation for my analysis, I will show how each form of ruin is represented in Irish literature to provoke resistant renegotiations of cultural memory.
20 citations
TL;DR: Incompiuto Siciliano as mentioned in this paper, a group of artists named Alterazioni Video has been developing the project Incompiutti Siciliiano, through which they have sought to counter the negative perception of these ruins by considering them as an aestheticized architectural style, which is significant because visual arts and especially photography have in recent years been accused of pursuing a merely romanticizing objective that ignores the political, economic and social contexts in which modern ruins arise.
Abstract: The modern Italian landscape includes a large number of public construction projects begun over the past 50 years but abandoned before completion—a testament to the misuse of public funds through political corruption and the influence of the Mafia. Since 2007, a group of artists named Alterazioni Video has been developing the project Incompiuto Siciliano, through which they have sought to counter the negative perception of these ruins by considering them as an aestheticized architectural style. The group’s approach is significant because visual arts, and especially photography, have in recent years been accused of pursuing a merely romanticizing objective that ignores the political, economic and social contexts in which modern ruins arise. Embedding the current paper within this discussion makes it possible to align Incompiuto Siciliano with literatures on contemporary archaeology that regard the aestheticization of ruins as a first step to a critical comprehension of the reasons behind their origination—which ultimately leads to their re-valorization and eventual re-activation.
15 citations
Cites background from "The value of ruins: Allegories of d..."
...The German architect prefers to allocate his view into the beautiful effect that nature and weather produces in his ‘natural’ ruins – which places these “on the scale of geological time” (Stead 2003, 54)....
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...In summary, “[w]here Benjamin sees transience and decay, Speer sees permanence and continuation” (Stead 2003, 59), and this is particularly interesting in Incompiuto Siciliano for representing a combination of the two approaches here expressed, for using the resources of a conservative view to…...
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...Instead, the allegory makes ruins to go beyond aesthetics, where, once it is detached from romantic and mythifying assumptions, ends up revealing ruins’ critical existence (Stead 2003)....
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Dissertation•
13 May 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the confluence of knowledge, power and the production of resilient space through a case study of how the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture is being rebuilt after the tsunami of March 11, 2011 (known in Japan as 3.11).
Abstract: This dissertation explores the confluence of knowledge, power and the production of resilient space through a case study of how the town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture is being rebuilt after the tsunami of March 11, 2011 (known in Japan as 3.11). In response to the damage, the local and national governments are enacting an unprecedented, top-down restructuring of coastal space that entails relocating communities to higher ground, building giant seawalls, and imposing new land-use restrictions. My study examines the effects these policies are having on residents, asking why and how they are resisting proposals that in theory (and the government argues) should make them safer. As well as ethnographic research in Minamisanriku and its environs, I draw on formal interviews with a cross section of residents, and analyze documents produced by various levels of government and citizen’s groups. I show how, for many inhabitants of the affected regions, reconstruction is like a second disaster, erasing both pre-disaster social space and the memory of the disasters themselves in the name of a future they have not chosen and cannot see.
15 citations
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial as discussed by the authors was created by the United States Department of Defense to remember the World War II tragedy at Port Chicago, where two ammunition ships exploded, killing 320 military personnel.
Abstract: Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Port Chicago came to international attention on July 17, 1944 when two ammunition ships exploded, killing 320 military personnel. Two-thirds of those killed were African American stevedores ordered to load munitions under a segregated Navy. It was the worst domestic disaster during World War II. Three weeks after the blast, hundreds of survivors refused to return to work in a spontaneous wildcat strike. Fifty of these men were convicted of mutiny charges by an all-white military tribunal, a catalyst for the 1948 Executive Order that desegregated the Armed Forces. When President Barack Obama signed the 2010 defense budget, he also approved a subsection that created a new national park: The Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial. While the creation of the national park could be conflated with a symbolic closure to these struggles, my research finds that the memory of Port Chicago is contested through various spatial imaginaries. Furthermore, because the site is ensconced within an active base, the military controls access to this memorial--a rare case. As such, it crystallizes usually unnoticed tensions between public space and national memory. I study these tensions at Port Chicago and other Bay Area sites of the World War II home front related to the popularized Port Chicago story. I find that different groups create their own narrative of the military past, sometimes challenging National Park Service narratives, and sometimes also exacerbating social and racial separation.
13 citations