Remembering the red zones: heritage-making in the more-than-human-worlds of modern conflict

Abstract

The First World War created landscapes in which people and the natural world became deeply entangled through conflict in a never-ending cycle of destruction and rebirth. Soldiers renegotiated their understanding of the natural world to survive, which in turn led to empathy for its suffering. After 1918, these more-than-human worlds of war became sites of pilgrimage and remembrance, strictly human places in which nature’s war-life was not acknowledged, influencing the post-conflict heritage process to focus on the human cost of war. Nevertheless, some areas could not be salvaged and were designated as ‘zone rouge’ (red zones), places heavily destroyed and contaminated with war-waste, unfit for human beings. Today, isolated sections of the Western Front retain this status, as do many post-1918 conflict landscapes around the world, with ecologies of violence managed by people, but not controlled. This paper critically analyses the memorial landscape of Vimy Ridge in northern France, comparing its adjacent section of zone rouge with the more manicured publicly accessible ritualised space. In doing so, it suggests these forbidden places can act as memorials to the more-than-human cost of modern warfare and thereby play a pivotal role in the Authorised Heritage Discourse of remembrance as heritage practice.