Beyond the Age of Destruction – Remembering an Alternative Future at an Anti-nuclear Protest Camp

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Capitalism’s Cracks" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historical archaeology in Europe has focused on dark heritage and sites of trauma. While important, this work on the ‘time to destroy’ may inadvertently silence sites and events opposed to this daily destruction and alienation. A case study of an anti-nuclear protest camp in 1980s Germany will show that cracks in capitalism form where people were not just protesting against something (a nuclear waste facility that could harm future generations), but when they experimented with an alternative way to live and envision the future. The archaeological record shows that specialised activist objects were not needed to create and experience a collective time of mutual aid and their other-doing existed alongside mundane commodity forms. Archaeological intervention can help to reveal these cracks that are often concealed as we remember these counter-heritage sites, but also cautions how these blurry pictures of utopia can so easily be internalized to further serve capital.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology of Capitalism’s Cracks

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 193