Brecciation,post-geographies,and spaces in transition

Introduction

Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch’s (2021) article is a fascinating piece that puts space on an equal footing to time in the analysis of ‘post’ situations by using a series of metaphors to help illustrate the various types of changes taking place. Her work invites us to reassess the co-constitutive relation of space-time regimes, and, in doing so, my commentary will explore the metaphor of brecciation in more detail before discussing how spaces in transition may obscure hidden processes that are indicative of change.

Making sense of a jumbled whole

Houssay-Holzschuch mentions that the need for metaphors arises when language is insufficient to describe what is occurring in the field. In my research in Rome, this need came about when the only means to describe how the past intervened in the present was through notions of the palimpsest. In certain circumstances, I did encounter places that demonstrated a chronological layering of time (following archaeological stratification) that paralleled the literary metaphor of the palimpsest. However, the sites that excited me the most were those that could not be described through the palimpsest because the places featured temporal, material, and spatial juxtaposition.

Through my readings, I came across Sigmund Freud’s first introductory lectures on psychoanalysis, which he developed following numerous trips to Italy. In a lecture from 1916, he compares the disparate pieces making up a dream to the breccia, a sedimentary rock in which angular fragments of different origins and times are consolidated together to form a whole (Freud et al., 1989: 224). In a dream state, the unconscious sees a dream as forming a whole, but when one wakes up and starts to explain the different parts making up the dream, it often does not seem to make sense. For me, this was the perfect analogy to illustrate some of the remarkable places I was seeing in Rome.

A key element for me in considering the breccia metaphor was to capture the becoming or the ongoing-ness of a process. Breccia, like the dream, is an output; the result of something that has already taken place. By converting the metaphor to brecciation, I was aiming to include the possibilities of more change as a process was still ongoing. As such, the metaphor of brecciation represents a process in flux, rather than a finished state. This is important because in an historical city that has to contend with preserving so many pasts, some architects and planners I spoke to were concerned by the potential ‘museumification’ of the city. The metaphor of brecciation, therefore, embeds within its principle the ability to change. In other words, the past is not hindering the present, but rather enabling present and alternative future possibilities to spatially emerge. Here, time and space work together to produce new urban places with the past.

Away from Rome’s historical centre, however, more contemporary neighbourhoods exist, some of which may have more in common with the space-time regimes and tensions of post situations that Houssay-Holzschuch highlights in Cape Town. One case in point is Rome’s EUR neighbourhood, planned by Mussolini and initially created for the 1942 World Fair (which never took place because of World War II). During my research, one of Mussolini’s bunkers in EUR ‘resurfaced’ as it became the site of an art exhibition called ‘confrontations’, exposing the bunker and the fascist regime under which it was built (Bartolini, 2015). According to Houssay-Holzschuch’s listing of metaphors, the tomason metaphor could be applied here as the bunker is created at the time of the fascist regime: the bunker is a memory sign that protrudes in the present, enticing emotion. The bubble metaphor could also be used if the focus is on the art exhibition that took place in 2009, and therefore produced after the fascist regime: the art exhibition effectively providing a pop-up, fleeting engagement with a difficult past. While the past here is tangible and ‘fixed’ in place, there is still a sense that future possibilities could emerge at the site. For me, the bunker – and the post-fascist engagements with it – are still reflective of the metaphor of brecciation because the site is one that is still becoming (Massey, 2005, 2006): a place that has the potential to be explored physically and psychologically in the future.

In Cape Town, Houssay-Holzschuch identifies the Prestwich Street Memorial, where an unmarked grave of slaves was uncovered and memorialised, as a perfect example of brecciation. In this case, it would be difficult to imagine how that particular place could change in the future since the Memorial’s design suggests an air of material recognition and fixity. This would be more in line with the breccia metaphor I mentioned above. However, the materiality underpinning the metaphor of brecciation may find synergies in the site as a whole. In a story on the Prestwich Street Memorial featured in Independent Online, a South African news and information website, writer Latashia Naidoo mentions that:

the memorial’s significance is often overshadowed due to its juxtaposition to another building. The popular Truth Coffee Roasting coffeehouse is situated adjacent to the memorial centre. On any given day, droves of coffee-lovers, including your quintessential Cape hipster-types, frequent the trendy coffee establishment; many, without batting an eyelid at the conspicuous building next door. (Naidoo, 2018)

What the whole of the Memorial site enables is an ongoing reflection; a pondering that may touch upon a series of historical, traumatic, political, and intersectional perspectives on apartheid. If the ‘time of creation’ of the site is pre-apartheid, one could argue that the process embedded within the metaphor of brecciation involved here is less about the time of creation than it is about the ongoing reflections of pre- and post-apartheid that this site as a whole produces. Building on this thought, the next section will specifically focus on being attentive to these ongoing entanglements of space-time regimes in post situations.

The geographies of transition

Houssay-Holzschuch’s analysis centres on post situations involving systemic revolutions, yet also points to ‘any post situation [that] tilts our analysis towards a temporal analysis and the well-trodden – but not less complex – avenues of continuity and change’. This led me to think about post situations that were not mentioned in the article, in particular post-industrial landscapes.

Some of the research I have undertaken since Rome has been in post-industrial towns and cities in the UK. Like other post situations, the term suggests that there is a break from a past – here, dominated by an industry – and due to a decline in demand, production, or change in process, that industry is now considered in the past. This shift from an economy that focused on a main industry to a reliance on a number of different economic activities is not a simple trajectory that is linear in time and space. As Houssay-Holzschuch alludes to, it is not always clear how breaks of time can be defined and articulated in post situation spatialities. For instance, in both Stoke-on-Trent and in St Austell in the UK, their respective main industries are not eradicated from the landscape; they simply exist in different forms (Bartolini and DeSilvey, 2020). This is because the break in time is not quick and stark on the landscape, but rather a prolonged period of gradual change. I would like to consider these moments ‘in the midst of transition’ and what these moments mean – not only temporally, but spatially as well: moments that are stretched in time, where the past is still present, and where material and immaterial traces can manifest themselves through various geographies in the post landscape.

In St Austell, for example, a new ‘garden village’ development is being created on land previously used for china clay mining. During the planning process, some members of the community raised concerns over the potential eradication of hybrid structures that originated from the processing of resource extraction, changing the landscape. These hybrid structures became central to the design and developers adjusted their plans to encapsulate space-time regimes: the entanglement of past, present, and futures, as well as the continuity – and allowance of change – of these hybrid industrial heritage ‘naturecultures’ associated with the past and valued in the present. Here, brecciation as a metaphor can be used to examine processes of change as they unfolded, and will continue to unfold, in the midst of a site in transition. I refer to the processes of change that are subtle, gradually witnessed and experienced by local communities, and often hidden in post-geographies, such as the reassessment of values, the management accommodations, the networked assemblages, and the shift in structures of power. This example is emblematic of the space-time entanglements that could feature in other post situations. By appreciating these entanglements – and their varying geographies – as they unfold in the midst of transition, one can also expose the tensions framed through discourses and actions, which in turn enable an understanding of the power relations that exist in transitional landscapes.

Rather than signalling a marked change between a pre and post state, places in post situations can be seen as they are transitioning. What Houssay-Holzschuch has done in her article is draw attention to these important liminal spaces by appreciating the different geographies that shape post landscapes. She is encouraging further critical thinking on space as a key contributor to better understand how post situations’ entanglements demonstrate both continuity and change. In doing so, she is also inviting us to consider the transitional period of post situations where the post moment is stretched in time: refocusing our attention away from a clear break with the past and instead appreciating the memorial entanglements that co-exist through processes that produce space. Attending to these geographies where processes of change are sometimes hidden, ephemeral, or ignored highlights structures of power and ongoing tensions that are indicative of post situations and places in transition.