Non-sites of memory

Non-sites of memory – dispersed locations of various genocides, ethnic cleansings, and other similarly motivated acts of violence, which are not commemorated but are not completely forgotten either. Usually they function in local contexts in a negative way: they are removed from dominant memory cultures through lack of visible signs of commemoration (monuments, plaques, markings) or/and through intentional neglect. What they have in common is a lack of information (altogether or of proper, founded information), of material forms of commemoration (plaques, monuments, museums), and of reparations (any official designation of the scope of the territory in question). Non-sites of memory also have in common the past or continued presence of human remains (bodies of deceased persons) that have not been neutralized by funerary rites. Such localities are often transformed, manipulated, or contested in some other way (often devastated or littered). The term was first used by Claude Lanzmann, the French documentary filmmaker who in the 1970s visited with his crew un-commemorated post-camp and post-ghetto sites and was further developed by Roma Sendyka in her article “Prism: Understanding Non-Sites of Memory’’ (2015).