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Paper short abstract

My contribution frames disaster traces of memory as failed futures that materialize when and because they are made to disappear, looking at how polarizations between remembering and forgetting forge not just occlusions, but new, and potentially transformative paths ahead.

Paper long abstract

The Tohoku region, in northeastern Japan, has long been exposed to recurrent natural disasters, most notably the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. Fifteen years later, communities in coastal Tohoku have seemingly recovered, but traces linger: not just ruins and remains, but traces of the desired futures that never were and never manifested, encapsulated as much in the remains as well as in the violence of top-down post-disaster management and reconstruction practices. My paper investigates trace as an analytic to frame memory and heritage in post-disaster Tohoku through the lense of Derrida’s hauntology, defining traces as remains of memories not just as simple mourning over lost pasts, but over lost futures, and “endings that are not over”, too. It points to failed futures, that existed in imagination but never manifested, and that, however, continue to exert force on people, both through practices of remembering and of active forgetting (McClintock, 2009). Engaging trace as both material and beyond the trace-object itself, as an excess of meaning that carries affective as well as metaphorical power. Such perspective recognises that the living present is not as dense and structured as we think, and neither are our concepts, labels and ontologies. My contribution aims at looking at disaster traces through heritage, memory, forgettings, and bottom-up practices as failed futures that materialize when (and because) they are made to disappear, looking at how polarizations between remembering and forgetting forge not just occlusions, but new, and potentially transformative paths ahead.