Plastic Pasts: Sited Memory in Paris, Algiers and Marseille

Plastic Pasts explores how communities and cultural producers have grappled with the present past in space as an enduring and dynamic memory, arguing that understanding sited memory as plastic entails recognising a multiplicity of immutable pasts that exist in a permanent state of ongoing evolution.

Format: Hardback
Length: 297 pages
Publication date: 21 November 2023
Publisher: Springer Verlag, Singapore

Plasticity is a metaphor used in this book to comprehend how the past persists and transforms within the landscape, and how remembering shapes the sites we inhabit and utilize. The plastic site is distinguished by its resilience, as its form remains largely unchanged from an earlier mold, and its malleability, which ensures that whatever persists undergoes inevitable transformation. The present configuration of the site embodies the numerous moments that have contributed to its development over time, which are continually supplemented and modified. By examining examples from Paris, Algiers, and Marseille, as well as diverse media such as literature, film, photography, blogs, and video games, Plastic Pasts explores how different communities and cultural producers have engaged with the present past in space as a lasting and dynamic memory. It contends that recognizing sited memory as plastic involves acknowledging a multitude of immutable pasts that exist in a perpetual state of evolution.

Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789819956159
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023