Ritika Pathania1 and Raj Thakur2
1PhD. Department of English, Central University of Jammu, J&K, India. Address: H.no. 218- E, Sainik Colony, Jammu-180011, J&K, India. Email: ritika9feb@gmail.com. Orcid id- https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5608-7588
2PhD. Assistant Professor, Department of English, Central University of Jammu. Bagla (Rahya Suchani) Distt. Samba, J&K, India. Email: thakurraj.13@gmail.com. Orcid id- https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6962-3658
Volume 13, Number 1, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n1.34
Visualizing Memory Scapes: A Spatio- Affective Study of Select War Memorials of Jammu and Kashmir
Abstract
The paper through iconographic and spatial dynamics, critically engages with the performative aspect of the select war memorial sites in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. While the interdisciplinary study of war memorials in relation to memory and commemorative politics have been studied, its materialistic aesthetics informed through spatial and affective contours remains a burgeoning field of enquiry if not an unexampled one. The study is premised on the photographic field work of the sites envisioned through the cultural geography of war memorials. In approaching war memorial sites as a landscape of memory, we take the position that memory is simultaneously a material and immaterial phenomenon and these cannot be detached from affective and visceral human bonds and their roles in (re-)formulations in space and place. The materialistic aesthetics of memory- memorial continuum are ideated through spatial and affective contours, which, in turn, inform the predominant and everyday experience of grief and bereavement, both imagined and lived. The study dominantly attests its claims through Foucault’s concept of ‘heterotopia’ in relation to commemorative sites. The heterotopic tensions of multiple experiences and belongings are unpacked through both tangible and affective domains ranging from dominant public commemorative sites to parks and shopping complexes.
Keywords: war memorials, memory, spatiality, affect, Jammu and Kashmir