2023-02-06

Ruins remnants of past epochs, but they also embody a past which 'haunts' the present, giving rise to ethical dilemmas stemming from the ways and the scope of commemorating relics of the past. In the modern context, ruins often become 'problematic heritage', that is, a past - as Sharon Macdonald (2009:1) called it - that has meaning, but is at the same time, for various reasons, questioned and uncomfortable to be officially recognised and commemorated; it is also problematic since it disrupts the present, causing, for example, social divisions and conflicts through the disturbing visions of the future it evokes. What the ruins speak, do they become helpful in transforming the latter's scars into building materials for a future, what kind of spaces can be labeled troublesome heritage and why? This volume also intends to explore broader future interdisciplinary dialogical space between history, archaeology, anthropology, heritage and other disciplines that have their interest in different kind of ruins.