Harrowed landscapes: white ruingazers in Namibia and Detroit and the cultivation of memory

摘要: This article compares the ruins of Detroit and Namibia, focusing on ways that previously dominant white groups use those ruins. In both cases ruined buildings appeal to these as particularly evocative objects. While ruin seems always signify transience, mortality historicity, its more specific meanings are semantically underdetermined, varying by historical context social group. Many suburbanites Detroit's industrial nourish their nostalgic longing for city's golden era Fordist prosperity. does not seem entail any confusion past present, however. The object is unambiguously perceived historical. By contrast, German‐Namibians colonial satisfy perpetuate a sense melancholia simultaneously denies acknowledges end German power. Both forms consciousness prefer gradually being reassimilated into nature restored heritage sites tourist industry.