MEMORY OF LANDSCAPE

MEMORY LANDSCAPE (MEMORYSCAPE)

A term from the field of humanities used especially in studies of memory, ecocriticism, general and environmental history, landscape archaeology and humanistic geography.

According to Simon Schama’s concept, the memoryscape is situated at the junction of research into the cultural entanglement of people and observations of nature, with which people enter into relations that define their lifestyle or history. The memoryscape refers to an environment or place that preserves traces of the past, is an assemblage of past epochs, refers to old memories or current customs, or remains unchanged in its own way despite the passage of time.

The memoryscape is also connected with the notion of “place of remembrance” (fr. lieu de mémoire) proposed by Pierre Nora in the 1970s. A place of remembrance is a space where a given community stores its heritage and traditions constituting its identity – it may be a topographic site (library, archive, museum), a monument (memorial, cemetery, historic architecture), a symbolic place (commemoration site). The place of remembrance is not closed because it is a part of real, social, political, cultural or imagined space. Thus, the memoryscape is a vast place (in the topographical sense), connected with collective memory, which has been embedded and placed in a specific space. Memory landscapes, by expressing (erecting monuments, celebrating holidays in specific places) or erasing (toppling monuments, demolishing architecture) memory, reflect in space what is important for the community that identifies itself with them. The memoryscape is a landscape in which the memory (or memories, often in conflict with each other) of the community to which a given landscape belongs is materially and symbolically deposited. According to Myga-Piątek, the memoryscape is its ability to record, store and recall information about phenomena and processes taking place in history and unfolding in a specific geographical and social environment (Myga-Piątek).

In addition to the memoryscape, there is also the landscape of oblivion, also known as the landscape of non-memory. This term is used in Polish literature, especially in reflections on the so-called Recovered Territories and communities inhabiting these areas before the Second World War (Skała, Wolski) and in studies of the Holocaust (Sendyka). In relation to the first of the above mentioned research fields, this term indicates that the memory of past residents of the Recovered Territories is not cultivated, even though traces of their presence have been preserved in the landscape (e.g. old buildings, remains of old urban systems, disruptions in the urban grid, vegetation). As part of studies on the Holocaust, the term is a critical tool deconstructing the affirmative meaning of the landscape, indicating the role of traumatic or abandoned places in the contemporary cultural landscape.

[M. St.]

Literature:

Budrewicz, Zofia, Sienko, Maria (eds.) Krajobrazy pamięci – pamięć krajobrazu. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego, 2014.

Gediga, Bogusław, Grossman, Anna, Piotrowski, Wojciech (eds.) Miejsca pamięci – pradzieje, średniowiecze i współczesność. Biskupin-Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Archeologii i Etnologii PAN, 2016.

Minta-Tworzowska, Danuta. „Pamięć, »miejsca pamięci« jako budujące tożsamość w ujęciu archeologii”.  Przegląd Archeologiczny 61 (2013): 33-50.

Myga-Piątek, Urszula. „Pamięć krajobrazu – zapis dziejów w przestrzeni”. Studia Geohistorica 3 (2015): 29-45.

Nora, Pierre. „Between History and Memory: les lieux de memoire“. „Representations“ 26 (spring

1989). s. 7–24.

Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.

Sendyka, Roma. „Krajobrazy (nie)pamięci: dekonstrukcja krajobrazu kulturowego”. In: Więcej niż obraz, ed. Eugeniusz Wilk i in., 81-99. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra, 2015.

Skała, Magdalena, Wolski, Jacek. „Krajobraz (nie)pamięci – teraźniejszość nadpisująca przeszłość”. In: Bojkowszczyzna Zachodnia – wczoraj, dziś, jutro…, ed. Jacek Wolski, 347-378. Warszawa: Instytut Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagospodarowania PAN, 2016.