Session Information
17 SES 10, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
In 2014/2018 it will be one hundred years ago that Europe was transformed in a cruel and devastating war. When the guns fell silent on November 11th millions of soldiers had died on the battlefield and even more returned to their homes facing a life with a couple of limbs less or not being able anymore to see, hear or talk. For those disabled soldiers the war did not end. But at the time of the Armistice it were not only bodies which were disabled for life. Complete regions too were devastated and described in terms of wounded landscapes or mutilated districts. Already at the time of the First World War architects and doctors heatedly debated the future of these disabled bodies and mutilated landscapes. What should be done for these maimed soldiers? How should one cope with those wounded regions? In this presentation we will focus on the Belgian case. Also Belgium had to pay a human and geographical cost for its regained freedom. Besides the approximately 6000 disabled soldiers Belgium, at the end of the Great War, also had to face the issue of completely destroyed regions. Especially the environment of Ypres – including the city itself – was completely devastated. In this presentation I will recall a huge discussion that already started before the end of the war. Architects, urban planners and politicians heatedly debated the idea of conserving (a part) of Ypres in a ruined state calling this well delineated space a zone of silence. This zone of silence – which by the way never would be realized – actually was conceived at the other side of the Channel, but very soon also triggered the hearts and minds of some Belgian high placed officials. On the basis of the unpublished debates with regard to the installation of such a zone of silence we will show how in this burgeoning branch of educational history – namely the spatialization of schooling, education & instruction – silence needs/deserves to be discussed at length as an educational means and an instrument to remember in this or that way. It is furthermore our intention to contrast these discussions with the way Belgian official organizations and the disabled themselves saw their own disabled bodies as signs of remembrance. How did these wounded and devastated bodies – by some described as ‘human wrecks’ – reflect and relate to that relatively new need to re-member. The discussions with regard to how one should relate to devastated regions and the manifold practices that gave shaped to and remembered the suffering of the innumerable mutilated bodies, according to me paved the way for a particular way of remembering, one that up till today captures and shapes our need to commemorate the Great War.
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