Skrevet af BEVAN
Crumbled shells of mosques in Iraq, the fall of the World Trade Center
towers on September 11: when architectural totems such as these are
destroyed by conflicts and the ravages of war, more than mere buildings
are at stake. The Destruction of Memory—now available in this
accessible, pocket edition—reveals the extent to which a nation weds
itself to its landscape. Robert Bevan argues that such destruction not
only shatters a nation’s culture and morale but is also a deliberate act
of eradicating a culture’s memory and, ultimately, its existence.
Bevan combs through world history to highlight a range of wars and
conflicts in which the destruction of architecture was pivotal. From
Cortez’s razing of Aztec cities to the carpet bombings of Dresden and
Tokyo in World War II to the war in the former Yugoslavia, The Destruction of Memory
exposes the cultural war that rages behind architectural annihilation,
revealing that in this subliminal assault lies the complex aim of
exterminating a people. He provocatively argues for “the fatally
intertwined experience of genocide and cultural genocide,” ultimately
proposing the elevation of cultural genocide from “collateral damage” to
a crime punishable by international law.
