Difficult Pasts and the Care of Place: Memory-Work as Imagining More Just Futures

How can we listen to and represent difficult pasts in responsible and ethical ways? How can we create more responsible geographies of memory and hope? If we begin by considering how the places, towns and cities in which we... [ view full abstract ]

How can we listen to and represent difficult pasts in responsible and ethical ways? How can we create more responsible geographies of memory and hope? If we begin by considering how the places, towns and cities in which we live have been wounded by past and ongoing forms of oppression and violence, we shift our understanding of place from location or property to one of intergenerational and shared meanings. This talk highlights different projects that advance a place-based, environmental and intergenerational ethics of care created by activists, artists, and local experts living in cities as diverse as Berlin, Cape Town, Bogotá, Dublin, Los Angeles, and Roanoke. By learning to take care of place, we may learn to better care for each other and imagine more just futures.