Making Memory Space: Recollection and Reconciliation in Post ...

that is seeking to memorialise the past and to move beyond it yet still operating in its aftermath.
Memory space is torn between seeking to reflect the multifarious perspectives on the past, thus
ensuring the continuance of recollection, and the desire to counter the existing bias of the Apartheid
regime with a revised narrative of the past which assumes a similar tone of authority.
This thesis begins with an examination of what constitutes memory space and how memory may be
made manifest physically through spatial production. The investigation stems from an
acknowledgment that memory space may serve a significant function in a society on the cusp of
change, seeking to recognise events of a recent past in a present still resonating from the effects of
that past. Official memory space exists within a contemporary urbanscape, a palimpsest of the past
that connects it to the present and future through built form. Memory space often acts as a physical
link between the present and the past allowing individuals to move into the ‘twilight’ of recollection.
The notion of twilight is developed by Andreas Huyssen, a social historian and theorist, who situates
memory in the space between reality and our ability to recall it. This state of being describes the
complexity of recollection and its impossible position between the events of the past and our
memories of them. Huyssen’s notion of twilight poetically depicts the mercurial relationship between
memory and history, and articulates the separation of the past with our ability to recall it. It is this
nebulous state of being that forms the landscape of this writing, the background in which all memory is
situated. 5 Huyssen argues that the schism between remembering (and its corollary – forgetting) and
the forms of expression that mark recollection, i.e. the structures of representation itself, offers
opportunities for creative expression. It is precisely an examination of these structures and an
exploration of the underpinnings and machinations of such spaces that forms the basis for this work.
In the course of this discussion it becomes apparent that memory space exists in two primary forms.
On one hand, it exists in the form of ‘traumascapes’, or spaces that have witnessed acts of horror and
as a result have inadvertently become synonymous with the past itself. 6 On the other, it exists as sites
of official memory such as monuments and museums that were deliberately constructed to convey a
specific narrative of an existing regime. Determining how to treat the former has become particularly
fraught, as debate over locations such as Ground Zero, New York, in the aftermath of the attacks on
the twin towers in Manhattan has recently shown. Reverence and a sense of respect for the victims
may result in a form of stasis at the site, which is left as it was, void or ruin as memorial. The site of a
historical event is also considered to resonate with a form of latent charge through its role as witness
of atrocity - an embodiment of horror - which renders the built form somehow complicit in the act itself.
Architecture in this sense can become an incarnation of the events of the past. This can be seen in the
treatment of sites of trauma on a grand scale, such as Auschwitz in Poland or on a small scale such
5 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p.2.
6 Maria Tumarkin, Traumascapes: The Fate and Power of Places Transformed by Tragedy (Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press, 2005).
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