Places of memory: from the track to the meaning / Places of memory: from traces to meaning

This paper aims to investigate the ways in which space signifies the past and conveys memories, with a particular attention to traumatic pasts. After having offered a synthetic description of the specificity of a semiotic approach to the study of memory seen as an endless construction and reconstruction of the past, rather than its faithful representation, and having made a claim for a basic distinction between events and their sense, the article considers some particular places devoted to the transmission of a traumatic memory, denominated "trauma sites". Trauma sites are memorials that elaborate existing traces of mass murders of various kinds that have taken place in that specific point in space. This paper argues for the indexical nature of such places, and discusses the semiotic nature of imprints and traces, proposing a non-ontological perspective on indexicality based on beliefs rather than on referential links to external reality.