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Paper short abstract:

Decommissioned defence sites are one of the many flagrant examples of what humans leave behind and the need for new generations to work with scraps, rubble and in some cases, toxic debris of past conflicts that are not that past, as we can see in Eastern Estonia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that the problem with ordnance and military waste is not just that they might be dangerous, but also that they remain in a wrong way. In their upset resurfacing, army remnants trouble well-fixed cultural categories and historical representations, claiming that there is something more to say. It is a form of negativity that does not stand as a negation of war, but an extension of it instead, confronting us with the limits of our corporeal and mental capacities.

Certain elements that might produce pain or phantasms have to be moved off the sight, to prevent them from conditioning agency in the present. The complication, however, is not just that they might contest optimism or entail political critique, but the intransitive repercussion that the resurfacing entails – forcing us to notice what had successfully become unperceivable and moved aside.

Based on a long-term field research in Eastern Estonia, this paper describes a series of phantasmagorias that the traces of WWII still arise in the region. Ghostly matter and absent-presences resurface itchy uncanny emotions, the unknown well-known. These ways of dys-appearing partly relate to social choices made long ago, yet affect younger generations in unplanned ways and make visible contemporary failures. I conclude that the problem of military remnants is their wrong way of resurfacing, generating a phantasmagoric quality to them, one that connects past and present conflicts (such as the one in Ukraine).