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Mobile Temporalities: Place, Ruination and the Dialectics of Time

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Memories on the Move

Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship ((MDC))

Abstract

This chapter explores the ambiguous, contradictory and often transient ways in which the past enters our lives. It sheds light on the interplay of mobility and temporality in the life-worlds of two Somalis who left Mogadishu at the outbreak of the war in the 1990s. Looking into the ways in which they actively make sense of this crucial ‘memory-place’ (Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting, 2004), a place that that has been turned into a landscape of ruins and rubble, alternative understandings of memory and temporality will emerge. Instead of producing a continuum between here and there, and now and then, the stories and photographs discussed in this chapter form dialectical images—images that refuse to be woven into a coherent picture of the past. By emphasizing the dialectical ways in which these two individuals make sense of Mogadishu’s past and present, the chapter is following Walter Benjamin’s cue to rethink deeply modern analytical categories such as history, memory and temporality by highlighting the brief, fragmented moments of their appearance in everyday life.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Annika Lems

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  1. Annika Lems
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Monika Palmberger

  2. Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Jelena Tošić

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Lems, A. (2016). Mobile Temporalities: Place, Ruination and the Dialectics of Time. In: Palmberger, M., Tošić, J. (eds) Memories on the Move. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57549-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57549-4_6

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57548-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57549-4

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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