Metonyms of destruction
Death, ruination, and the bombing of Rotterdam in the Second World War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2391205 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Antonius Cgm Robben (0000-0003-3253-339X, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 324-343 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Material Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13591835211016488 |
| OpenAlex | W3162991416 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 35 |
The German and Allied bombing of Rotterdam in the Second World War caused thousands of dead and hundreds of missing, and severely damaged the Dutch port city. The joint destruction of people and their built environment made the ruins and rubble stand metonymically for the dead when they could not be mentioned in the censored press. The contiguity of ruins, rubble, corpses and human remains was not only semantic but also material because of the intermingling and even amalgamation of organic and inorganic remains into anthropomineral debris. The hybrid matter was dumped in rivers and canals to create broad avenues and a modern city centre. This article argues that Rotterdam's semantic and material metonyms of destruction were generated by the contiguity, entanglement, and post-mortem and post-ruination agencies of the dead and the destroyed city centre. This analysis provides insight into the interaction and co-constitution of human and material remains in war
Archaeology · Contiguity · Political science · Rubble · World War II · Archaeological Research and Protection · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
The Allied Air War and Urban Memory
The Neglected Networks of Material Agency
Art And Agency
The Make-Believe Space
Thinking Through Material Culture
Metaphors We Live By
How Things Shape the Mind
The Work of the Dead
The social agency of dead bodies
Forensic Afterlives
Nostalgia for Ruins
Toward the Archaeontology of the dead body
Patina
Pandora's hope
Agency, ‘Til Death Do Us Part? Inquiring about the Agency of Dead Bodies from the Ancient Andes
Resonant Materiality and Violent Remembering
The co-constitution of violent death
The Material Presence of the Past
Causality
Death, Memory and Material Culture
Metaphor and Material Culture
The politics of vibrant matter
Between tortured bodies and resurfacing bones
Of Clues and Signs
Imperial Debris
Entangled
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |