The aesthetics of memory: Ruins, visibility and witnessing

This article presents the findings of research regarding the transformation of the meaning of ex-detention and extermination sites in Chile. In the context of the increasing cost of land and the ‘urban cleansing’ associated with global processes of neoliberalization, the author reflects in particular upon the dynamics of visibility and erasure that accompany the life of these recent ruins, and the various politics of their memorialization. From a critical phenomenological perspective the author argues that ruins of sites of violence have the capacity to interrupt, transgress and even contradict narratives about them; furthermore, the relation between affect, ethics and aesthetics is discussed so as to raise questions about the possibility of witnessing and the challenges of memorialization