Jessica Rapson | King's College London (original) (raw)
Books by Jessica Rapson
Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of “monument fatigue,” a f... more Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of “monument fatigue,” a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. Bringing together recent scholarship from cultural memory and cultural geography, the author focuses on the way these violent histories are remembered, allowing these sites to emerge as dynamic transcultural landscapes of encounter in which difficult pasts can be represented and comprehended in the present. This leads to an examination of the role of the environment, or, more particularly, the ways in which the natural environment, co-opted in the process of killing, becomes a medium for remembrance.
Papers by Jessica Rapson
As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemora... more As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemorative landscapes to engender meaningful and textualised encounters with a past which, all too often, seems distant and untouchable. As the concentration camps and mass graves that shape our experiential access to this past are integrated into tourist itineraries, associated discourse is increasingly delimited by a pervasive sense of memorial fatigue which is itself compounded by the notion that the experiences of the Holocaust are beyond representation; that they deny, evade or transcend communication and comprehension. Harnessing recent developments across memory studies, cultural geography and ecocritical literary theory, this thesis contends that memory is always in production and never produced; always a journey and never a destination. In refusing the notion of an ineffable past, I turn to the texts and topographies that structure contemporary encounters with the Holocaust and consid...
Political Geography, 2020
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Journal of Genocide Research, 2020
The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holo... more The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holocaust studies. The authors approach this emerging field of research through the context of environmental humanities with its current interest in the Anthropocene, soil science, forensics, multispecies collectives, and explorations of relations between ecocides and genocides. Proposed approach considers post-Holocaust spaces and landscapes as specific ecosystems and examines relations between its actors (human and non-human) in order to show the Holocaust's spatial markers and long-terms effects. The article outlines existing literature on the subject, identifies the central research problems and questions, and discusses sources and methods. The authors demonstrate that the environmental history of the Holocaust applies a hybrid methodology that uses methods from various disciplines with the aim of creating new theories and interpretive categories and thus should be considered complementary to existing approaches in Holocaust studies. The authors follow the methodological principles of grounded theory in generating new concepts and seeking multidisciplinary methods for explaining nature's role in the Holocaust and how Holocaust has changed nature. The authors claim that environmental history of the Holocaust broadens Holocaust studies as a field of research and opens up new questions concerning relations between nature and extermination in order to provide a more holistic perspective for exploring the relationship between culture and nature, genocide and ecocide. The approach proposed here shows Holocaust and post-Holocaust landscapes in terms of ecological/natural heritage, which might influence the way these spaces are commemorated, conserved and preserved, as well as used for tourist purposes.
Memory Studies, 2018
This article explores the contemporary mediation of memory at two plantation heritage sites on Lo... more This article explores the contemporary mediation of memory at two plantation heritage sites on Louisiana’s River Road. These sites, I argue, are systematically ‘refining’ cultural memories of African American enslavement, in a metaphorical echo of the industrial processing of commodities (oil and sugar) which takes place in the same landscape. The essay draws on initial informal ethnographic fieldwork at Oak Alley (the most-visited River Road plantation) and St Joseph (a working plantation) in 2015. I identify ways in which curatorial direction, guided tours and visitor facilities at each site elide the reality of slave sugar production. The results of this fieldwork are considered in light of a range of existing literature on contested heritage and environmental criticism, enabling a provisional contextualisation of ‘refined’ memory-making within the broader socio-economic and environmental context of River Road.
Topographies of Suffering, 2015
Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2017
Textual Practice, 2017
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Textual Practice, 2017
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 2014
Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2012
This paper interrogates the orthodoxies of cosmopolitanism via the example of an emerging commemo... more This paper interrogates the orthodoxies of cosmopolitanism via the example of an emerging commemorative network surrounding the Czech village of Lidice, drawing attention to a disjunction between idealised theories of memory and actual, instrumental memory practice. Razed by Nazi officials as an act of retaliation for the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich in Prague, 1942, Lidice's male inhabitants – mainly miners and factory workers – were shot, and women and children deported. In a notable example of productive transnational identification, a group of coal miners in Stoke-on-Trent, England began a fundraising initiative which resulted in the construction of a new Lidice overlooking the former site (1947). Whilst the field-defining work of Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2006) suggests that cosmopolitan memory-work avoids the homogenisation of Holocaust memories in the global sphere, I explore here the possibility that the complex motivations that guide such practices may undermine this premise. Accordingly the paper explores inscriptions of Lidice into local contexts via processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, focusing on its mobilisation in the 21st century in an examination the twinning of Lidice with Khojaly, Azerbaijan (February 2010) and with Stoke-on-Trent (underway). Campaigners in Stoke aim to inaugurate a new museum restore the town's ‘emotional bond’ with Lidice (Alan Gerrard 2010), whereas in Khojaly Lidice's memory is polemically aligned with the massacre of over 600 Azerbaijanis during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between ethnic Armenians and the Republic of Azerbaijan (1988–1992). The chapter considers the Lidice's twinning network as an example of cosmopolitan, supranational ‘glocalisation’ (Levy and Sznaider 2006). Whilst both cases rely on a sense of global-local solidarity rendered possible by the mobilisation of Holocaust memory, the motivations that ground them are significantly divergent; this essay assesses to what extent this may interfere with the potential of the twinning initiatives discussed to avoid a global homogenisation of Holocaust memory.
Annals of Tourism Research, 2013
Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of “monument fatigue,” a f... more Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of “monument fatigue,” a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. Bringing together recent scholarship from cultural memory and cultural geography, the author focuses on the way these violent histories are remembered, allowing these sites to emerge as dynamic transcultural landscapes of encounter in which difficult pasts can be represented and comprehended in the present. This leads to an examination of the role of the environment, or, more particularly, the ways in which the natural environment, co-opted in the process of killing, becomes a medium for remembrance.
As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemora... more As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemorative landscapes to engender meaningful and textualised encounters with a past which, all too often, seems distant and untouchable. As the concentration camps and mass graves that shape our experiential access to this past are integrated into tourist itineraries, associated discourse is increasingly delimited by a pervasive sense of memorial fatigue which is itself compounded by the notion that the experiences of the Holocaust are beyond representation; that they deny, evade or transcend communication and comprehension. Harnessing recent developments across memory studies, cultural geography and ecocritical literary theory, this thesis contends that memory is always in production and never produced; always a journey and never a destination. In refusing the notion of an ineffable past, I turn to the texts and topographies that structure contemporary encounters with the Holocaust and consid...
Political Geography, 2020
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Journal of Genocide Research, 2020
The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holo... more The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holocaust studies. The authors approach this emerging field of research through the context of environmental humanities with its current interest in the Anthropocene, soil science, forensics, multispecies collectives, and explorations of relations between ecocides and genocides. Proposed approach considers post-Holocaust spaces and landscapes as specific ecosystems and examines relations between its actors (human and non-human) in order to show the Holocaust's spatial markers and long-terms effects. The article outlines existing literature on the subject, identifies the central research problems and questions, and discusses sources and methods. The authors demonstrate that the environmental history of the Holocaust applies a hybrid methodology that uses methods from various disciplines with the aim of creating new theories and interpretive categories and thus should be considered complementary to existing approaches in Holocaust studies. The authors follow the methodological principles of grounded theory in generating new concepts and seeking multidisciplinary methods for explaining nature's role in the Holocaust and how Holocaust has changed nature. The authors claim that environmental history of the Holocaust broadens Holocaust studies as a field of research and opens up new questions concerning relations between nature and extermination in order to provide a more holistic perspective for exploring the relationship between culture and nature, genocide and ecocide. The approach proposed here shows Holocaust and post-Holocaust landscapes in terms of ecological/natural heritage, which might influence the way these spaces are commemorated, conserved and preserved, as well as used for tourist purposes.
Memory Studies, 2018
This article explores the contemporary mediation of memory at two plantation heritage sites on Lo... more This article explores the contemporary mediation of memory at two plantation heritage sites on Louisiana’s River Road. These sites, I argue, are systematically ‘refining’ cultural memories of African American enslavement, in a metaphorical echo of the industrial processing of commodities (oil and sugar) which takes place in the same landscape. The essay draws on initial informal ethnographic fieldwork at Oak Alley (the most-visited River Road plantation) and St Joseph (a working plantation) in 2015. I identify ways in which curatorial direction, guided tours and visitor facilities at each site elide the reality of slave sugar production. The results of this fieldwork are considered in light of a range of existing literature on contested heritage and environmental criticism, enabling a provisional contextualisation of ‘refined’ memory-making within the broader socio-economic and environmental context of River Road.
Topographies of Suffering, 2015
Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2017
Textual Practice, 2017
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Textual Practice, 2017
If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.
Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 2014
Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2012
This paper interrogates the orthodoxies of cosmopolitanism via the example of an emerging commemo... more This paper interrogates the orthodoxies of cosmopolitanism via the example of an emerging commemorative network surrounding the Czech village of Lidice, drawing attention to a disjunction between idealised theories of memory and actual, instrumental memory practice. Razed by Nazi officials as an act of retaliation for the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich in Prague, 1942, Lidice's male inhabitants – mainly miners and factory workers – were shot, and women and children deported. In a notable example of productive transnational identification, a group of coal miners in Stoke-on-Trent, England began a fundraising initiative which resulted in the construction of a new Lidice overlooking the former site (1947). Whilst the field-defining work of Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2006) suggests that cosmopolitan memory-work avoids the homogenisation of Holocaust memories in the global sphere, I explore here the possibility that the complex motivations that guide such practices may undermine this premise. Accordingly the paper explores inscriptions of Lidice into local contexts via processes of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation, focusing on its mobilisation in the 21st century in an examination the twinning of Lidice with Khojaly, Azerbaijan (February 2010) and with Stoke-on-Trent (underway). Campaigners in Stoke aim to inaugurate a new museum restore the town's ‘emotional bond’ with Lidice (Alan Gerrard 2010), whereas in Khojaly Lidice's memory is polemically aligned with the massacre of over 600 Azerbaijanis during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between ethnic Armenians and the Republic of Azerbaijan (1988–1992). The chapter considers the Lidice's twinning network as an example of cosmopolitan, supranational ‘glocalisation’ (Levy and Sznaider 2006). Whilst both cases rely on a sense of global-local solidarity rendered possible by the mobilisation of Holocaust memory, the motivations that ground them are significantly divergent; this essay assesses to what extent this may interfere with the potential of the twinning initiatives discussed to avoid a global homogenisation of Holocaust memory.
Annals of Tourism Research, 2013
This special issue considers the ways in which contemporary American fiction seeks to imagine a m... more This special issue considers the ways in which contemporary American fiction seeks to imagine a mode of ‘planetary memory’ able to address the scalar and systemic complexities of the Anthropocene – the epoch in which the combined activity of the human species has become a geological force in its own right. As Naomi Klein has recently argued, confronting the problem of anthropogenic climate change alters everything we know about the world: demanding wholesale recalibration of economic and political priorities; destabilising the epistemic frameworks through which quotidian life is interpreted and enacted; and decentring the dominant cultural imaginaries that seek to give form to historical and future experience.
This paper examines remediated memories of Hiroshima through an exploration of Peter Watkins’ fic... more This paper examines remediated memories of Hiroshima through an exploration of Peter Watkins’ fictional documentary The War Game (1965), in both its original context and as reclaimed media in ‘The Museum of Ante-Memorials’ (Taipei Biennial, 2012). I argue that The War Game, draws Hiroshima into a cosmopolitan dialogue with temporally and geographically distant events, and unpack the new implications of its repurposing. Drawing on scholarship on memories of Hiroshima (Levy and Sznaider 2005, Yoneyama 1999; Zwigenberg 2014), the essay ultimately interrogates the capacity of commemorative remediation to create cosmopolitan memories of the Japanese attacks in a global risk society.