Abstract:

In 2015, the independent businesses housed in the railway arches of Brixton Station were served eviction notices and forced to abandon their livelihoods so their spaces could be refurbished. In response, we set out to map the history of their inhabitants; but what we discovered was that the market in the Brixton Arches has existed largely within an official void. None of its history centrally stored or preserved, nor has it been consistently documented by Lambeth Council or the local archives; there is not even an exhaustive list of businesses registered to the arches over the last 150 years. This article explores the role that preservation politics plays in (re)shaping collective memory and public consciousness, and critiques how heritage politics, the production of memory and preservation practices are dominated by a particular philosophical understanding of memory and history as monolithic, stable and definable. Drawing on the work of scholars from minoritized communities, we propose that it is necessary to push back against normative frameworks, and instead begin from the complexities of difference. Through the concept of co-constitution we propose a framework for creating and preserving spaces that encompass the multiplicity of perspectives, identities, and subjectivities of their inhabitants.

摘要：

2015 年，位于布里克斯顿车站铁路拱门内的独立企业收到驱逐通知，被迫放弃生计，以便翻新他们的空间。作为回应，我们着手绘制他们居民的历史地图；但我们发现布里克斯顿拱门的市场很大程度上存在于官方空白中。它的历史没有集中存储或保存，也没有被兰贝斯委员会或当地档案馆一致记录；在过去的 150 年里，甚至没有一份详尽的企业清单。本文探讨了保护政治在（重新）塑造集体记忆和公共意识方面的作用，并批判了遗产政治如何，记忆和保存实践的生产由对记忆和历史的特殊哲学理解主导，它是整体的、稳定的和可定义的。借鉴少数群体学者的工作，我们建议有必要反对规范框架，而是从差异的复杂性开始。通过共同构成的概念，我们提出了一个框架，用于创建和保护空间，其中包含居民的多种观点、身份和主观性。