Event overview
Centre for Postcolonial Studies Research Seminar
Department of Politics
Centre for Postcolonial Studies
Seminars 2010-2011
Hiroshima “Shadows” and Ontology of the Human Remains
Presentation by Ewa Domanska
This presentation addresses the problem of the materiality of the dead body, its concrete, undeniable presence, its thingness. I focus on nuclear holocaust and the case of the “Human shadow etched in stone” that was imprinted on the stairs of the Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima during the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 (exhibited in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum). Humanistic interpretations concentrate on the phenomenon as a “shadow”; biochemists and physicists consider the material aspect of the “spot” as human ashes which, having been reduced to atoms, have been implanted into stone. How can historical theory deal with the issue of this specific post-mortem status of the dead body that has been annihilated without any possibility of identification?
Ewa Domanska is associate professor of theory and history of historiography at the Department of History, Adam Mickiewicz University at Pozna?, Poland and visiting associate professor at the Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA. She is author of Unconventional Histories. Reflections on the Past in the New Humanities (2006, in Polish) and editor of several books including Encounters: Philosophy of History After Postmodernism (Virginia University Press, 1998).
Monday 21 February 5.00 pm RHB 150
All Welcome
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Feb 2011 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm |
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