A Materiality of Placemaking and Campscapes

Abstract

Analyses of the materiality of internment reveal several themes related to the internees’ sense of place and perception of the space within and beyond the barbed wire of their camps. This chapter seeks to understand how the internees experienced the camps as confined spaces. It discusses both placemaking and depictions of camp landscapes through materiality as observed through six levels of analysis. It first explores how placemaking took place within the camp in a series of nested levels. It then expands outwards, merging placemaking into a reterritorialization of the campscape through various means, endeavouring to remove the sting from the experience of internment through the beauty of nature. This chapter also shows how images of home were brought into the camp, and how, in a reversal after liberation, images of the camp were brought back in the internees’ luggage, into the home. And yet the threat inherent in the barbed wire still lingered – sometimes for a lifetime. Despite the friendship associations and town-twinning efforts that have developed between the internees’ homes and the towns of their internment, some have resisted the invitations to return. The possibility of revisiting and contesting the dark image of the campscape in their minds’ eye was not one they could face in old age.