Drysfeydd y cymoedd: The sub-topographies of South Wales Valleys’ industrial crises.

Ntzani, Dimitra ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9798-8873 2023. Drysfeydd y cymoedd: The sub-topographies of South Wales Valleys’ industrial crises. Architecture and Culture , 2260167. 10.1080/20507828.2023.2260167 Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth defines as traumatic our encounters not with life-threatening events but with those that cause a break in our perception of time. She then explains that the memory of trauma is always fleeting, leaving connections with the time and place of traumatic occurrence fragile and obscure. Caruth’s definitions shape the work of contemporary geographers that argue that trauma is fundamentally unmappable. Does trauma’s relationship to space change when traumatization becomes repetitive and systematic? To explore systematic traumatization’s relationship to space, I adopt Lauren Berlant’s trauma definition as a crisis of ordinariness and revisit the South Wales Valleys region and its coal mining history as traumatic and contested. Using the exceptional Aberfan 1966 disaster as a starting point, I investigate a more ‘common’ industrial crisis of the same period and explore its relationship to the industrial space by analyzing its discursive and drawn records. In this journey, sketching out the spatial qualities of the colliery’s maze is crucial for understanding the crisis’ occurrence, belatedness, and commemoration. Keywords: Valleys, maze, colliery, trauma, crisis, memory, sub-topographies

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Architecture
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GF Human ecology. Anthropogeography H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	2050-7828
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	25 September 2023
Date of Acceptance:	14 September 2023
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2023 10:25
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/162679

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