Eliot’s Remains; An Enquiry into the Architectural ruins in The Waste Land

Abstract

The research paper aims to examine the architectural ruins presented in the poem, The Waste Land by T.S Eliot. The scope of architecture and its destruction in the poem builds itself on the theoretical framework of Heterotopia given by Michel Foucault where the spatial structures and normative forms are challenged using figurative language. By advancing and applying Hauntology theory given by Jacques Derrida, it informs about Eliot’s created spaces that haunt of historical past and cultural myths which furthers the poem’s nuance. To reveal dislocated modernist spaces, the paper critiques on cultural collective memory, historical trauma and acknowledges how fragmented identities, memories, moral and spiritual failure places itself in the poem through physical destruction of architecture.