Urban Terrorism in Contemporary Europe
Remembering, Imagining and Anticipating Violence

This open access book sheds light on collective practices of remembering, imagining and anticipating in relation to recent acts of urban terrorism in Europe. Analysing a range of personal and collective responses to urban terrorism in contemporary Europe, this book shows that current debates on this issue are shaped by multiple co-existing and intersecting memories of political violence in the past. 

Moreover, despite public declarations of unity and solidarity, collective memories of urban terror in contemporary Europe are far from consensual - memory can be both a catalyst for and an impediment to social and political change. Drawing on case studies from a range of European countries and creative responses by survivors, artists, and poets, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to key methods (e.g. discourse analysis and (auto-)ethnography) and concepts (e.g. Lieux de Mémoire and 'grassroots memorials') for the study of the memoralization of terror attacks.

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Contents

1 Introduction: Remembering Urban Terror in Europe—Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Memorialisation, Narratives, and the Politics of Memory 1
Katharina Karcher, Yordanka Dimcheva, Mia Parkes, and Mireya Toribio Medina

Part I Time

2 European Cities Facing Terrorism: From Social Responses to Memory, and Vice Versa 29
Gérôme Truc

3 20 Years On. A Walk Through the Memorialisation of the 11M Attacks 47
Mireya Toribio Medina

4 Memory as ‘Temporal Loop’ in the War on Terror: Using the Past to Secure the Future (and Failing) 69
Charlotte Heath-Kelly and Tom Pettinger

5 Barriers and Prevent Cakes 93
Faisal Hussain

Part II Silences

6 The Green Tent Forever 99
Endre Ruset and Harry Man

7 Contested Memories and the (Re)Construction of Violent Pasts in the Basque Country: A Critical Examination of the Memorial Centre for the Victims of Terrorism in Vitoria-Gasteiz 103
Itoiz Rodrigo-Jusué

8 Hanau/Main: Topography of Immigration, Taboo, and Terror, and Lieu de Mémoire 129
Karin Yesilada

Part III Presence and Absence

9 Remembering and Forgetting Terror in Berlin 155
Katharina Karcher

10 Making, Sharing and Extending Presence in Spontaneous Memorials. The Case of the 2017
Manchester Attack 161
Kostas Arvanitis and Robert Simpson

11 Resilience or Reconstruction? A Psychoanalytical Approach to Urban Space After the Attack on the Promenade des Anglais (Nice, 14.07.2016) 189
Frédéric Vinot

12 Vertigo 209
Harry Man and Endre Ruset

Part IV Victimhood and Trauma

13 Hands 215
Alejandro Acin and Darryn Frost

14 Temporal Conflicts and the Victimhood Communities (Un)Bound by Memory 219
Ana Miloševic

15 ‘He Must Continue Living Through Us’: The Role of Living Memorials in Continuing Bonds with the Deceased in the Aftermath of Terrorist Violence in France (2015–2016) 241
Yordanka Dimcheva

16 Transition of an Ex-hostage: Trial of the 13 November 2015 Attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis 267
David Fritz Goeppinger

Part V Literature and Creative Imagination

17 Inside the Car 281
Endre Ruset and Harry Man

18 The Realm of Change 285
Harry Man

19 Terrorist Trials Under Literary Scrutiny: Literature as Counterterrorist Response 297
Ingvild Folkvord and Jean Lassègue

20 Out in the Open 315
Jose Ibarrola

Index 321 

The Editors

Katharina Karcher, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Mireya Toribio Medina, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Yordanka Dimcheva, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Mia Parkes, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK