Overview

The essays in this book explore the history of ruins in multiple cultures and periods. Authors study ways in which ruins can be appropriated, foregrounded and re-semanticized for political purposes. The links between the materiality of monuments and global processes of ruination are seldom explored, as are the historicity of rubble and its museumification. Ruins are predicated on the interplay between presence and absence; they remind us of caducity while conjuring up the spectrum of the completeness that would negate them. They can awaken the eeriness of the disintegrating modern city and serve as a metaphor for institutional decay. But they can also underpin proposals of restoration through salvage and reuse of the rubble.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joan Ramon Resina ,  Laura Menéndez Gorina
Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
Imprint:   Liverpool University Press
ISBN:  

9781836245384

ISBN 10:   1836245386
Pages:   248
Publication Date:   05 September 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction. Modernity in Ruins. Chapter 1. Alain Schnapp. The Resistance of Ruins. Chapter 2. Andreas Schönle. Contested and Detested Ruin: The Russianised Afterlife of the Church of the Tithe in Kyiv. Chapter 3. Daniel Baric. A Tale of Two (Ruined) Cities: Salona (Croatia) and Doclea (Montenegro) in Socialist Yugoslavia and beyond. Chapter 4. Jennifer Scappettone. From Colossus to Copper Particulates: Liberty Enlightening the World as Ruin. Chapter 5. Gastón Gordillo. Rubble and Revolution: The Making of Worlds as Creative Destruction. Chapter 6. Francesc Torres. Rubble, History and Time. Chapter 7. Mercè Picornell. Use, Preservation and Emotional Mapping of Ruinous Objects: a Reading from the Perspective of Francesc Torres’s La campana hermètica (The Hermetic Bell). Chapter 8. Christoph Wulf. The Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. Ruin of the Past – Place of the New. Chapter 9. Pablo Arboleda. MacGuffin in Ruins: A More-Than-Representational Tale of Urban Exploration. Chapter 10. Costica Bradatan. Amid the Living Ruins of the Cynic School. Chapter 11. Joan Ramon Resina. The Ruins of the University.

Reviews

“[This book] is a timely publication and it shows new perspectives and modes of how to approach [this] complex topic.” - Zoltán Somhegyi – Associate Professor of Art history, Department of Philosophy, University of Szeged, Hungary “[This book] is a fascinating collection of contributions that complement each other so that readers can easily follow the transversal themes raised by the editors.” – Professor Till Förster, University of Basel

Author Information

Joan Ramon Resina is Professor of Iberian Cultures and Comparative Literature at Stanford. Laura Menéndez Gorina is Research Manager for Computational Social Sciences and Humanities and Education at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

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