Writing Place after Conflict: Exhausting a Square in Sarajevo

Abstract

This essay returns to Sarajevo, a city visited by Georges Perec in 1957, employing field observation and ethnographic methods that he developed during the course of his writing career. The aim, in revisiting this city and in repeating Perecquian practices, is to move beyond the clichéd ways of seeing and writing Sarajevo only as a site of trauma and as a place defined by violence. My intention as such here is to document three days in one square in Sarajevo. Field notes taken during this time are copied out word for word in what follows. The words act as a record of the everyday things, bodily movements, and nonspectacular moments, often ignored in descriptions of places defined by their traumatic pasts. Writing turned out to be a performance in itself, as place, time, and word intertwined briefly and the recounting of a present-day Sarajevo took place. Yet through this repetitive representational action, trauma and political unrest resuggested themselves. Recording place became an attempt at repairing place, in its bodily occupation of a place and in its representation of an everyday place on the page.

本文回到乔治．培瑞克在1957年到访的城市——赛拉耶佛，并运用他在写作志业中发展出的田野观察和民族志方法。藉由重新造访这座城市并重复培瑞克的实践，本文的目标在于超越仅将赛拉耶佛视为并描绘成创伤地和由暴力定义之地的陈旧方式。我的此般目的，在于记录赛拉耶佛一个广场上的三日。随之发生之事，则在我于此段期间记录的田野笔记中逐字抄写出。这些文字扮演着对每日生活事物、身体化的行动以及非奇观的瞬间之记录，而这些经常在以创伤过往定义该地的描绘中受到忽略。当地方、时间与文字短暂地相互纠缠，而对赛拉耶佛的今日叙事发生之时，写作转为展演本身。但透过此般反覆再现行动，创伤与政治动荡再次指向自身。记录地方成了修復地方的尝试，在其以身体佔领地方、以及在书页上再现每日生活之地之中。

Como un retorno a Sarajevo, una ciudad que visitó Georges Perec en 1957, este ensayo emplea observaciones de campo y métodos etnográficos desarrollados por él durante el curso de su carrera como escritor. El objetivo final de volver a esta ciudad y repetir las prácticas perecquianas, es ir más allá de los usuales clichés de ver y describir a Sarajevo meramente como sitio de trauma y como un lugar definido por la violencia. La intención al respecto aquí es documentar tres días transcurridos en una plaza de Sarajevo. Las notas de campo tomadas durante este tiempo están copiadas palabra tras palabra en lo que sigue. Las palabras sirven de registro de las cosas cotidianas, los movimientos corporales y momentos sin espectacularidad alguna, a menudo ignorados en las descripciones de lugares definidos por sus pasados traumáticos. Escribir sobre esto resultó ser una representación en sí misma, a medida que lugar, tiempo y palabra se entrelazaban brevemente y el recuento de la Sarajevo de hoy se llevaba a cabo. Pero por medio de esta acción representacional repetitiva, trauma y malestar político volvieron a sugerirse por su propia cuenta. Registrar lugar se convirtió en un intento por reparar el propio lugar, en su ocupación corpórea de un sitio y en su representación en la página de un lugar cotidiano.

Key Words:

• conflict
• Georges Perec
• place
• representation
• Sarajevo

• 冲突
• 乔治．培瑞克
• 地方
• 再现
• 赛拉耶佛

• conflicto
• Georges Perec
• lugar
• representación
• Sarajevo

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank supportive colleagues in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield and supportive members of the Space and Political Agency Research Group/RELATE Centre of Excellence, at the University of Tampere, Finland, the Leverhulme Trust for funding the wider project on which this article is based, Dr. Jessica Dubow and Dr. Igor Stiks for reading the article prior to submission, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughful and constructive comments.

FUNDING

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust: Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship, New Regional Geographies (for Sarajevo) [ECF 2013–638].

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust: Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship, New Regional Geographies (for Sarajevo) [ECF 2013–638].

Notes on contributors

James Riding

JAMES RIDING is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Space and Political Agency Research Group/RELATE Centre of Excellence, University of Tampere, Tampere, 33100, Finland. E-mail: [email protected]. He was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, leading the project New Regional Geographies (For Sarajevo). He is the editor of Reanimating Regions: Culture, Politics, and Performance (2017), and the author of Land Writings: Excursions in the Footprints of Edward Thomas (2017).