Drysfa'r Cymoedd*: The sub-topographies of industrial crises of the South Wales Valleys. (*The Maze of the Valleys)

Ntzani, Dimitra ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9798-8873 2023. Drysfa'r Cymoedd*: The sub-topographies of industrial crises of the South Wales Valleys. (*The Maze of the Valleys). Presented at: AHRA Research Student Symposium 2023_ Research in crisis: tactics and methods, Cardiff University, 12-14 April 2023.

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Abstract

The language theorist 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 also suggests 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 is re-occurring and systematic? To explore systematic traumatization’s relationship to space, the presentation discusses Lauren Berlant’s definition of re-occurring traumas, as crises of ordinariness and revisits the South Wales Valleys’ coal mining heritage as traumatic and contested. Using the exceptional Aberfan 1966 disaster as a starting point, the presentation scrutinizes a more ‘common’ industrial crisis of the same period and explores its relationship to the industrial space by looking at its discursive and drawing records. In this journey, sketching out the spatial qualities of the colliery’s maze is crucial for understanding the crisis’ occurrence, belatedness, and commemoration.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Keynote)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Architecture
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races N Fine Arts > NA Architecture N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration
Date of Acceptance:	7 February 2023
Last Modified:	20 Apr 2023 10:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/158877

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