Contested Memoryscapes. Post-Disaster Ruins and Memorial Practices in the Vajont Valley (Italy)

In October 1963, an enormous landslide collapsed into the Vajont dam water basin, causing two waves that destroyed villages and lives, resulting in 1917 human deaths. Along the river Piave, Longarone was cancelled entirely, becoming a "martyred city" that has been rebuilt on its ruins. Instead, the little villages scattered along the Vajont valley remain in ruins, giving the space a "structure of feeling" - a spiritual, emotional, and historical dimension that contributes to the orientation of the living activities. Families here commemorate their beloved dead, who forever disappeared that night, bringing flowers and candles and praying for the souls instead of visiting the official monumental cemetery. And it is still here that - against the official narratives about the disaster - some of the survivors would like to start a form of "pilgrimage" that could bring tourists and students to discover what happened in the valley, getting closer to the family dimension of mourning practices instead of admiring the most spectacular aspects of the disaster. Observing how families manage material ad immaterial traces of the past is the best way to investigate the politics of memory, keeping together the experiential, emotional, and daily dimensions of kinship with the political meaning of kinship itself, which significantly challenges power. The ruins create imaginaries and affective orientations toward the memories of the dead and the landscape and then transform the scars of the latter into materials to build an imaginary future.