Introduction: The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence

Abstract

Mass violence leaves behind a trail of destruction. Similar to people, things also fall victim to displacement and armed conflict. Possessions swap hands, get voluntarily or forcefully relinquished, exchanged for food and shelter, hidden away, entrusted to friends and neighbours for safekeeping, or brought along into forced exile. Objects find their way to mass graves too, in the pockets and bodily orifices of the killed, on the fingers and wrists of the dead. In times of war, things are also made in response to economic scarcity and deprivation. Produced from waste and debris, such objects come to serve as mementoes, reflecting prison or frontline experiences and attesting to the hardships of the time. In the aftermath of war and conflict, things are often rescued by survivors or the families of victims, inherited, retrieved by forensic experts, or looted from war graves. The surviving thing is mobilized in art practices and storytelling, displayed in museums, or called forth to testify in judicial proceedings. Whether as trophies, souvenir, or evidence, things remain imbued with affect, permeated with memories (both actual and constructed), and burdened with conflicting narratives of the past.1 This special issue investigates the role of objects in European histories and legacies of war, genocide and forced migration. Combining expertise in anthropology, forensic archaeology, cultural geography, history, and cultural and memory studies, the articles explore how rescued, looted, misappropriated, abandoned, found and recovered things live on in the aftermath of mass violence. Based on a broad range of cases and geographical contexts, from Spain to France, Italy to Poland, this issue looks at material, symbolic and political practices around surviving things and traces their trajectories in post-conflict settings. The authors show that personal objects are endowed with various qualities