the destruction of architecture, the desolation of a population’s connection with its native space is a tactic that both physically and psychologically seeks to crush a people's spirit. to see one’s cultural symbols defaced or destroyed is accompanied, not only with a loss, but with an offense against one's cultural identity. but this severance between identity and a symbol that functions to territorialize one's identity need not be negative. what the horror of the loss does not expose is the nihilistic meaning associated with such symbols. one mourns for what is destroyed but melancholically searches for what was repressed in the original acceptance of these now defunct symbols. we may mourn for the object of the loss, but we actually mourn for ourselves, that we deified such objects in the first place. if memory is tied to place, the destruction of place doesn't necessarily imply the destruction of memory, but worse– what is destroyed is one's connection to memory. instead of losing the memory altogether, one is haunted by a memory that cannot be placed.
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