Love & loss in the 1960s

Roland Barthes observed that though there is a ‘lover's discourse’ shared by all those who are in love, it is a discourse ignored or disparaged by ‘surrounding languages’. Concerned that the discourse of heritage may participate in this closure against the ‘in love’ experience, I begin to explore ways the field of heritage studies might start speaking this language. Specifically, I ponder the ways that a young Chinese woman in the film Days of being wild, following the breakup of a love affair, becomes locked in a landscape of lost love that is populated with objects sticky with affect, objects which although they transmit painful affects nevertheless bind her by a dynamic that Lauren Berlant terms ‘cruel optimism’. I then turn to imagine the way a Balinese house compound gateway might, in a similar way, have become impregnated with affects relating to victims of the 1965–1966 killings in Bali and how, for those left behind, it might assume the ability to ‘presence’ a lost one. Archaeology and heritage studies have great potential to foster empathy with the experience of past others, but this calls for a sophisticated understanding of how objects become imbued with affect and how they transmit it.     

Review Article: Franco Cunctator

PAUL PRESTON. Franco: A Biography. London: HarperCollins, 1993. Pp. xxi, 1,002. £25.00;

PAUL PRESTON. The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in Twentieth- Century Spain. London and New York: Routledge, 1990 and 1995 (reprint). Pp. xix, 215. £11.99;

MICHAEL ALPERT. A New International History of the Spanish Civil War. New York: St Martin's Press, 1994. Pp. ix, 209. $45.00 (US);

ENRIQUE MORADIELLOS. La Perfidia de Albión: El Gobierno británico y la guerra civil española. Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno de España Editores, 1996. Pp. xviii, 408. 3,000 ptas.