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Paper short abstract:

The Vajont disaster, which occurred in 1963 in northern Italy, left lots of ruins that are places of remembering, mourning, but also a start-point for alternative narratives about what happened in the valley 60 years ago. Actors of these memories are families, who never forgot their beloved dead.

Paper long abstract:

In October 1963, an enormous landslide collapsed into the Vajont dam water basin causing two waves that destroyed villages and lives, resulting in 1917 human dead. Along the river Piave, Longarone was cancelled entirely, becoming a "martyred city" that has been rebuilt on its ruins. Instead, the little villages scattered along the Vajont valley remain in ruins, giving the space a "structure of feeling" - a spiritual, emotional, and historical dimension that contributes to the orientation of the living activities. It's here that families commemorate their beloved dead, who forever disappeared that night, bringing flowers and candles, and praying for the souls, instead of going into the official Monumental Cemetery. And it's still here that - against the official narratives about the disaster - some of the survivors would like to start a form of "pilgrimage" that could bring tourists and students to discover what happened in the valley, getting closer to the family dimension of mourning practices instead of admiring the most spectacular aspects of the disaster. Observing how families manage material ad immaterial traces of the past is the best way to investigate the politics of memory, keeping together the experiential, emotional, and daily dimensions of kinship with the political meaning of kinship itself, which constitute real challenges to the power. The ruins create imaginaries and affective orientations toward the memories of the dead and the landscape and then transform the scars of the latter into materials to build an imaginary future.