Sociology
November 2016
Death and security
Memory and mortality at the bombsite
by Charlotte Heath-Kelly. Series edited by Peter Lawler, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet
Making a bold intervention into critical security studies literature, this book explores the ontological relationship between mortality and security. It considers the mortality theories of Heidegger and Bauman alongside literature from the sociology of death, before undertaking a comparative exploration of the memorialisation of four prominent post-terrorist sites: the World Trade Centre in New York, the Bali bombsite, the London bombings and the Norwegian sites attacked by Anders Breivik. By interviewing the architects and designers of these reconstruction projects, the book shows that practices of memorialisation are a retrospective security endeavour - they conceal and re-narrate the traumatic incursion of death. Disaster recovery is replete with security practices that return mortality to its sublimated position and remove the disruption posed by mortality to political authority. The book will be of significant interest to academics and postgraduates working in the fields of critical security studies, memory studies and international politics.
