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Traumascapes: The Power and Fate of Places Transformed by Tragedy
"Traumascapes are a distinctive category of places transformed physically and psychically by suffering, part of a scar tissue that stretches across the world." Maria Tumarkin grew up in the old Soviet Union, and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. In 2004, she embarked on an international odyssey to investigate and write about major sites of violence and suffering. Traumascapes is a powerful meditation on the places she visited: Bali, Berlin, Manhattan, Moscow, Port Arthur, Sarajevo, and the field in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane involved in the attacks of September 11 2001 crashed. In a time when terror and tragedy flourish these locations exhibit a compelling power, drawing pilgrims and tourists from around the world who want to understand the meaning of the traumatic events that unfolded there. In traumascapes, life goes on but the past is still unfinished business.
279 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2005
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About the author
Maria Tumarkin
10 books67 followersMaria Tumarkin is a writer and cultural historian. Her most recent book, AXIOMATIC, will be published by Transit Books in the US in September 2019. She is the author of three previous books of ideas Traumascapes, Courage, and Otherland, all of which received critical acclaim in Australia, where she lives.
In Australia, Axiomatic, won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award.
In Australia, Axiomatic, won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 28, 2023
Everything Maria Tumarkin pens is pure gold.
March 17, 2016
Quite unexpectedly, now that I’ve finally read it, I found myself having reservations about this much-lauded book. (And, to be honest, I have some qualms about saying so). Charlotte Wood was troubled by the lack of structure in the book in her review for The Age but I was more bothered by the tone. In exploring the haunting nature of places where terrible things have happened, Tumarkin selects Moscow, Bali, Berlin, New York (9/11), Shanksville, Sarajevo and Port Arthur and others – but adopts a lofty tone. God forbid, Tumarkin says on page 224 that I might sound moralising or rhetorical. Yet in the midst of this most thoughtful of books, here and there I found myself confronting accusatory generalisations.
Unravelling what is labelled ‘dark tourism’ Tumarkin explores the compulsion that takes people to the sites of tragedy. But at pains to separate her motives for doing so from the herd’s, Tumarkin claims an immunity conferred by her upbringing in the Soviet Union.
This makes her, she says, an ‘unlikely pilgrim’. She isn’t ‘comfortable’ with ‘the idea of trauma tourism.’
I find this sanctimonious. When in Berlin to visit museums of classical antiquity, The Spouse and I also visited the Berlin Holocaust Memorial out of respect. For us, one cannot visit that city without acknowledging its evil history; no matter how much time passes it would be morally wrong to ignore the past. We were not looking for a ‘cathartic experience’ as a ‘release from the burden of a traumatic past‘. We were honouring the murdered. We were asserting that they are not forgotten and that individually and collectively they still matter, to gentiles like us from the other side of the world who were not even born when it happened. It is not just that I could not look my Jewish friends in the eye if I chose not to do this; it is part of being fully human to remember the Holocaust. I don’t think this makes me and my motives special, because I don’t presume to judge the motives of the other people who are there.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2016/03/17/tr...
Unravelling what is labelled ‘dark tourism’ Tumarkin explores the compulsion that takes people to the sites of tragedy. But at pains to separate her motives for doing so from the herd’s, Tumarkin claims an immunity conferred by her upbringing in the Soviet Union.
Our life in the former Soviet Union taught us that people’s only real defence against paranoia and deceit perpetuated by the totalitarian regime was their individualism – hungry, uncontrollable and self-renewing. Being part of the herd was a sure path to moral and psychological disintegration. For as long as I can remember, I have referred to emotionally or otherwise charged activities customarily done in groups (demonstrations, mediations, parties, book clubs and group tours) as ‘group sex’. Collective undertakings like these have always seemed to me like the very definition of unnatural acts. (p.33)
This makes her, she says, an ‘unlikely pilgrim’. She isn’t ‘comfortable’ with ‘the idea of trauma tourism.’
To this day, when I go to the sites of trauma, I always catch myself trying to keep the greatest possible distance from tourists. I am writing a book, I tell myself. I need to come here. I am not sightseeing, but gathering vital research. I have no curiosity, only the need to see these places with my own eyes. When I come to sites of trauma, I try not to stay in hotels. This is not just a money-saving strategy; I need to make sure I am not bound in any way to other tourists. If it so happens that I end up joining guided tours – an extremely rare turn of events, all in all – it is only to see what kind of stories are being fed to tourists – a category from which I obsessively exclude myself. (p.52-3)
I find this sanctimonious. When in Berlin to visit museums of classical antiquity, The Spouse and I also visited the Berlin Holocaust Memorial out of respect. For us, one cannot visit that city without acknowledging its evil history; no matter how much time passes it would be morally wrong to ignore the past. We were not looking for a ‘cathartic experience’ as a ‘release from the burden of a traumatic past‘. We were honouring the murdered. We were asserting that they are not forgotten and that individually and collectively they still matter, to gentiles like us from the other side of the world who were not even born when it happened. It is not just that I could not look my Jewish friends in the eye if I chose not to do this; it is part of being fully human to remember the Holocaust. I don’t think this makes me and my motives special, because I don’t presume to judge the motives of the other people who are there.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2016/03/17/tr...
December 24, 2018
Axiomatic is untoppable but going back and reading Maria’s backlist has been brilliant so far. Next is Otherland.
April 5, 2011
The caption description for this book is obviously describing another book! (seems to be taken from the Amazon site which has the same error.)
The correct description is:
'Traumascapes are a distinctive category of places transformed physically and psychically by suffering, part of a scar tissue that stretches across the world.'
Maria Tumarkin grew up in the old Soviet Union, and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. In 2004, she embarked on an international odyssey to investigate and write about major sites of violence and suffering. Traumascapes is a powerful meditation on the places she visited: Bali, Berlin, Manhattan, Moscow, Port Arthur, Sarajevo, and the field in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane involved in the attacks of September 11 2001 crashed.
In a time when terror and tragedy flourish these locations exhibit a compelling power, drawing pilgrims and tourists from around the world who want to understand the meaning of the traumatic events that unfolded there. In traumascapes, life goes on but the past is still unfinished business.
About the Author
Maria Tumarkin was born in 1974 in the former Soviet Union in a Russian Jewish family, which settled in Kharkiv - the second largest city in Ukraine. From the age of seven, she attended a literary club at the Palace of Pioneers, acquiring a habit of judging people solely by the number of books they had read. In 1989, at the time of Gorbachev's reforms, a large number of Soviet Jews were able to leave their country, and Maria's family immigrated to Australia.
In 1992, less than two years after arriving in Australia, Maria bluffed her way into a Melbourne Journalism course. She was 17, could barely speak English and did not even finish Year 11. She said she was 23, avoided all questions about schooling, looked determined and, miraculously, got in. A few years later she enrolled at the University of Melbourne to study history and cultural studies and ended up completing an interdisciplinary Ph.D thesis on sites of trauma. Her work on trauma and lived geography has since been published in major academic and popular journals and presented on radio and at international conferences.
For the past year, she has travelled the world doing research for her book on the fate and power of traumascapes.
The correct description is:
'Traumascapes are a distinctive category of places transformed physically and psychically by suffering, part of a scar tissue that stretches across the world.'
Maria Tumarkin grew up in the old Soviet Union, and emigrated to Australia as a teenager. In 2004, she embarked on an international odyssey to investigate and write about major sites of violence and suffering. Traumascapes is a powerful meditation on the places she visited: Bali, Berlin, Manhattan, Moscow, Port Arthur, Sarajevo, and the field in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane involved in the attacks of September 11 2001 crashed.
In a time when terror and tragedy flourish these locations exhibit a compelling power, drawing pilgrims and tourists from around the world who want to understand the meaning of the traumatic events that unfolded there. In traumascapes, life goes on but the past is still unfinished business.
About the Author
Maria Tumarkin was born in 1974 in the former Soviet Union in a Russian Jewish family, which settled in Kharkiv - the second largest city in Ukraine. From the age of seven, she attended a literary club at the Palace of Pioneers, acquiring a habit of judging people solely by the number of books they had read. In 1989, at the time of Gorbachev's reforms, a large number of Soviet Jews were able to leave their country, and Maria's family immigrated to Australia.
In 1992, less than two years after arriving in Australia, Maria bluffed her way into a Melbourne Journalism course. She was 17, could barely speak English and did not even finish Year 11. She said she was 23, avoided all questions about schooling, looked determined and, miraculously, got in. A few years later she enrolled at the University of Melbourne to study history and cultural studies and ended up completing an interdisciplinary Ph.D thesis on sites of trauma. Her work on trauma and lived geography has since been published in major academic and popular journals and presented on radio and at international conferences.
For the past year, she has travelled the world doing research for her book on the fate and power of traumascapes.
March 20, 2019
Challenging, thought-provoking, and hugely informative, Tumarkin's Traumascapes is an immensely interesting book and a must-read for anyone interested in places that are often defined by trauma. While I would have preferred a place-by-place structure to the book, instead of the terribly long first section and the many short sections at the end, all of which drew on the varied places mentioned on the cover, this is a minor critique. Tumarkin is not prescriptive in how we should preserve, renovate or restore Traumascapes, nor in how we should react to them - and ultimately (though I would in some ways have loved to see some guidelines) this is as it should be.
An important book.
An important book.
May 13, 2020
Another chilling read.
"I think the need to mark places of trauma and death is so strong in part because trauma often cannot be marked in time" (78).
In Maria Tumarkin's 'Traumascapes' she takes readers on journey's of trauma tourism and the societal need to reach out and connect with places of deep tragedy. She draws on the Port Arthur Massacre, Bali Bombings, Sarajevo and more.
I am writing about trauma in relation to people, rather than places. But Turmakin's words ring truth regardless as she discusses how trauma is 'overwhelming' and highlights the dinstinctions between running away and towards, survival and community; a collective response to loss and suffering.
"Going to a site of trauma even years after a tragedy is like entering an unhealed wound. You have to do it as cleanly as possible" (240).
Renegotiating my past and understanding who I was from the ages of fourteen to sixteen feels a lot like this. There are layers and bumps that I am never going to be able to articulate in fact. The echoes of my experiences ring out and will continue to do so even if I find myself at peace with another human being. It is at once, chilling and welcoming. I do not know how to not be cautious, much like the survivors of the trauma that Turmakin draws on, do not know how to live in new spaces. We return to heal, I return to him in my writing.
History, personal and non, seems to leave me voiceless. I don't know how to articulate or respond to this in a way that is goin to be adequate. Perhaps that is okay. I don't need to go deep.
"I don't understand how life keeps going, except that it does" (218).
"I think the need to mark places of trauma and death is so strong in part because trauma often cannot be marked in time" (78).
In Maria Tumarkin's 'Traumascapes' she takes readers on journey's of trauma tourism and the societal need to reach out and connect with places of deep tragedy. She draws on the Port Arthur Massacre, Bali Bombings, Sarajevo and more.
I am writing about trauma in relation to people, rather than places. But Turmakin's words ring truth regardless as she discusses how trauma is 'overwhelming' and highlights the dinstinctions between running away and towards, survival and community; a collective response to loss and suffering.
"Going to a site of trauma even years after a tragedy is like entering an unhealed wound. You have to do it as cleanly as possible" (240).
Renegotiating my past and understanding who I was from the ages of fourteen to sixteen feels a lot like this. There are layers and bumps that I am never going to be able to articulate in fact. The echoes of my experiences ring out and will continue to do so even if I find myself at peace with another human being. It is at once, chilling and welcoming. I do not know how to not be cautious, much like the survivors of the trauma that Turmakin draws on, do not know how to live in new spaces. We return to heal, I return to him in my writing.
History, personal and non, seems to leave me voiceless. I don't know how to articulate or respond to this in a way that is goin to be adequate. Perhaps that is okay. I don't need to go deep.
"I don't understand how life keeps going, except that it does" (218).
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews