Introduction to the Special Forum: Remembering Territory, Territorializing Memory

The papers brought together in this forum explore the theme of "territorial memory," or the way that past territorial formations persist in the landscape, available for recall and reworking in response to the present, while at the same time present territorial configurations reorganize understandings of the past. In this introduction, we present this concept and situate it at the intersection of political geography, the geography of memory, and planning theory. We argue that studies of territory and of memory in these fields can be expanded and deepened by foregrounding a view of territory as a memory practice, and memory practices as territorial. While the workings of territorial memory are often most starkly evident in conflict, they are present in all kinds of contexts. Attending to them opens distinct lines of inquiry regarding what counts as "of memory," how territoriality functions, and why spatial patterns may not simply last or disappear but seem to flicker in and out of visibility. Ultimately, "territorial memory" is a means of examining the many situations in which the politics of memory and of territoriality—including but not limited to the nation-state scale—move as one.