Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma. Practices of (Re)Presentation of Collective Memory in Space in Contemporary Europe

After a recently published special issue devoted to the “politics of memory”, Versus delves again into the rich field of memory studies, this time reversing the approach. While in that volume the selection of contributions was “methodological” (how semiotics can deal with such concepts as collective and cultural memory and what kind of analysis it can produce), this time we opted for a thematic criterion, choosing a subject that is at the same time theoretical and analytical. We now focus on the relation between space and memory, namely the symbolic dimension in the processes of spatialization of collective memories of war in Europe. The objects under investigation in the articles here presented are museums, and places but also landscapes or simply segments of spatial environments that play a role in the shared reminiscences of a community.