Unearthing the Unrecorded: Memory, History, and Urban Erasure in Brixton

Abstract:In 2015, the independent businesses housed in the railway arches of Brixton Station were served eviction notices and forced to abandon their livelihoods so their spaces could be refurbished. In response, we set out to map the history of their inhabitants; but what we discovered was that the market in the Brixton Arches has existed largely within an official void. None of its history centrally stored or preserved, nor has it been consistently documented by Lambeth Council or the local archives; there is not even an exhaustive list of businesses registered to the arches over the last 150 years. This article explores the role that preservation politics plays in (re)shaping collective memory and public consciousness, and critiques how heritage politics, the production of memory and preservation practices are dominated by a particular philosophical understanding of memory and history as monolithic, stable and definable. Drawing on the work of scholars from minoritized communities, we propose that it is necessary to push back against normative frameworks, and instead begin from the complexities of difference. Through the concept of co-constitution we propose a framework for creating and preserving spaces that encompass the multiplicity of perspectives, identities, and subjectivities of their inhabitants.