The Subject of Suffering

Abstract

As the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno argued, suffering is one of the most fundamental of human experiences. In archaeological narratives, however, suffering seldom appears. Instead, current trends in archaeology, including the focus on the relevance of things, the dissolution of boundaries between subjects and objects, and the foregrounding of agency, shift attention away from the subject of suffering. I discuss an archaeology that takes suffering as a central issue, drawing on archaeological work at sites of the Nazi period in Berlin. Rather than promoting positive identifications with the past, I argue that we need archaeologies that work toward respect and responsibility by acknowledging suffering, both past and present. [suffering, experience, archaeology of Nazi

“I Like to Keep my Archaeology Dead”. Alienation and Othering of the Past as an Ethical Problem

“…A rather different example from Germany is the recent finding of skeletal remains close to the campus of the Free University in Berlin [6,18]. During construction work in July 2014 human skeletal remains from at least 15 individuals were found.…”

“…Or even future generations? Can there be an empathy with the suffering experienced by the people of the past [6]? Or is the sense of responsibility to past subjects an illusion, since they are already dead and cannot be discriminated against or offended [7,8]?…”

Earth flows and lively stone. What differences does ‘vibrant’ matter make?

“…First, post-humanism shifts attention away from social inequality and resists issues of social justice. Second, through a series of complicated philosophical manoeuvres, these post-human approaches circumnavigate issues of intentionality in the past (see also Pollock 2016; Ribeiro 2016). Altogether, according to Van Dyke, these approaches avoid any serious engagement with ethics and politics.…”

Middle East Encounters 69 Degrees North Latitude: Syrian Refugees and Everyday Humanitarianism in the Arctic

“…Hers is as much as anything a moral claim-yet we are reminded of what Theodor W. Adorno wrote regarding suffering as one of the most basic of human experiences. 31 The turn of my conversation with Merete took me back to my earlier work in the Middle East, where I was concerned with human physical and emotional endurances of war, and with contextualizing acts of resilience and documenting individuals engrossed in everyday negotiations to sustain and rehabilitate their fractured lives and move forward. 32 In a sense, some of the accounts here resonate with the stories of struggle and resilience gathered in my earlier work, but here the retelling is in a different register.…”