The pronouns of industrial crises: Coal mining memorials and women representation in the South Wales Valleys

Ntzani, Dimitra ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9798-8873 2025. The pronouns of industrial crises: Coal mining memorials and women representation in the South Wales Valleys. Presented at: 2025 MSA Annual Conference_Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)stability, Prague, Czech Republic, 14-18 July 2025.

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Abstract

20th century architectures and rituals of crisis’ commemoration are neither inclusive nor neutral. They are often silent arenas where ethnic/gender/class considerations are competing for historical representation and power (Edkins 2003, Winter 2006). This paper looks at the inclusion and representation of women in memorials of mining disasters in the South Wales Valleys from the 20th century to the early 2000, to discuss how the trauma-memories of industrial crisis are interweaved with narratives of national pride in the Welsh industrial landscape. It also interrogates their location, spatial form, gender and class biases to problematise not the obvious and recurring absence of women but their distorted and limited presence and understated contribution in the Welsh mining industry. In this geographical and scholarly context, mining crisis memorials and rituals are analysed as deeply political actions, actions of clash or negotiation of the multiple narratives of agents at play (Gillis, 1994). The paper weaves in the records of the empirical study of coal mining memorials that spread across the South Welsh Valleys, and attempts a formal analysis of their design features in their historical and geographical context. To do so, it theoretically redefines mining disasters as crisis of ordinariness with references to the cultural theorist Lauren Berlant’s to discuss how gender and nation politics are portrayed in their design. Lauren Berlant turns the spotlight on power structures of traumatization and argues that the precarity brought about by trauma is cunningly common in post-World War II geopolitical realms. Berlant defines systematic traumas as crises of ordinariness, instances where our exposure to systemic violence and exploitation is acknowledged with delay. Inhabiting the registered locations of industrial crisis’ commemoration, the paper refrains from treating their study as integrally oppositional, dual and dividing. The vague and volatile nature of industrial crises creates room for constructive analysis of gender contributions and representations to the Welsh industrial heritage and history.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Architecture
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
Related URLs:	https://msaprague2025.dryfta.com/index.p...
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	23 June 2025
Date of Acceptance:	21 January 2025
Last Modified:	08 Jul 2025 15:20
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/179265

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