Traversing the fantasies of urban destruction: Ruin gazing in Varosha

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the imagination of urban destruction and a personal experience of a particular urban ruin: the former resort town of Varosha in Cyprus, abandoned since 1974. I draw out the connections between my experience of Varosha's ruined spaces and three imaginative tropes that emerged out of and influenced that experience: first, the fantasy of urban annihilation (or urbicide), an enduring trope of apocalyptic cinema and actualized in modern aerial warfare; second, the fantasy of being the first/last witness in a post-apocalyptic ruined world; and, third, the fantasy of disanthropy, or the imagination of the world as post-human. The result is to open up a space of dialogue between the experience of being in urban ruins, the contested histories of those ruins and the imagination of urban destruction in order to address the wider questions of how large-scale ruins might be remembered and reconstituted in ways that promote inclusivity, hold together contradictions and maintain the hope of healing.