Book contents
- Front matter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Death and security – the only two certainties
- 1 The problem of dying while resilient
- 2 Containing the spectacle: Disaster management
- 3 Reflecting absence?: Disaster recovery and the World Trade Center
- 4 Reclaiming place and self-harming architecture: Norwegian experiences of death and security
- 5 Mutating disaster space: Itinerant death at the Ground Zero Mosque and Bali bombsite
- 6 Bombs without bombsites: Memory and security without visibility
- Conclusion: Pathologising security through Lacanian desire
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Bombs without bombsites: Memory and security without visibility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2026
Book contents
- Front matter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Death and security – the only two certainties
- 1 The problem of dying while resilient
- 2 Containing the spectacle: Disaster management
- 3 Reflecting absence?: Disaster recovery and the World Trade Center
- 4 Reclaiming place and self-harming architecture: Norwegian experiences of death and security
- 5 Mutating disaster space: Itinerant death at the Ground Zero Mosque and Bali bombsite
- 6 Bombs without bombsites: Memory and security without visibility
- Conclusion: Pathologising security through Lacanian desire
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the relationship between visibility, memorialisation and security through case studies of the London bombing, the invasion of Afghanistan by coalition troops, and the situation of post-terrorist memorials in tourism economies. It analyses how some invisible (underground) bombsites are made visible during memorialisation to expunge their morbid resonance, whereas other invisible deaths (those of Afghanis) remain inconspicuous given their situation in political structures of grievability. Finally, the chapter explores the integration of post-terrorist memorials into tourist agendas and the function of the tourist gaze as a signifying tool which can reconstitute formerly traumatic sites.
Information
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- Death and securityMemory and mortality at the bombsite, pp. 153 - 169Publisher: Manchester University PressFirst published in: 2026
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