Executive summary
The conference took place in two parts: first at NIAS in Amsterdam (19 June 2023), and subsequently at CegeSoma in Brussels (14 September 2023). The programmes included panels on urban persecution, spatial invisibility, and post-war representations, highlighting cities such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Luxembourg. Across disciplines, participants analysed literary texts, autobiographies, diaries, visual art, and cultural artefacts to understand how urban environments shaped experiences of marginalisation, displacement, and survival.
The project’s central insight is that urban space is not neutral: under totalitarian regimes, it becomes actively structured by policies of exclusion, surveillance, and segregation. Literature and the arts provide crucial testimonies of these transformations, revealing how individuals navigated and reimagined constrained urban environments. The notion of “clandestinity” emerged as a key analytical lens, capturing both physical hiding and symbolic invisibility within the city.
The conference also laid the groundwork for a forthcoming edited volume and themed issue, extending the project’s impact beyond the events themselves. By combining historical, literary, and spatial approaches, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of how cities function as sites of memory, exclusion, and resilience, with ongoing relevance for contemporary debates on urban inequality and social inclusion.
Why it matters
The project contributes to understanding how mechanisms of exclusion – such as spatial segregation, invisibilisation, and restricted mobility – operate within metropolitan contexts, both historically and today. By focusing on Brussels alongside other European cities, the project situates the city within a broader comparative framework, highlighting shared dynamics of occupation, persecution, and resistance. The Brussels conference at CegeSoma reinforced the city’s role as a hub for historical research and public engagement. The findings are relevant for policymakers, cultural institutions, and urban stakeholders concerned with diversity, memory politics, and inclusive urban development. They offer critical insights into how urban narratives and cultural representations shape public understanding of exclusion, thereby informing contemporary debates on social cohesion and democratic resilience.
Project objectives
Objective 1: To analyse how urban spaces of exclusion and clandestinity are represented in literature and the arts across European cities.
Objective 2: To develop an interdisciplinary framework combining literary studies, urban studies, and historiography.
Objective 3: To foster international collaboration and establish a research network on urban exclusion and cultural memory, mainly in the context of war and persecution.
Objective 4: To translate academic insights into outputs with societal relevance (publication, public events, dissemination).
Key findings
Key finding 1: Urban space under totalitarian regimes is actively reorganised to enforce exclusion, producing zones of visibility and invisibility for targeted populations.
Key finding 2: Literature and the arts function as key media of resistance and testimony, reconstructing hidden or erased urban experiences and revealing micro-spaces (“heterotopias”) of survival.
Key finding 3: Experiences of clandestinity are both spatial and symbolic, involving mobility constraints, altered perceptions of the city, and new forms of identity formation.
Key finding 4: Comparative analysis across cities demonstrates shared patterns of exclusion, while also highlighting local specificities in urban policy and cultural representation.
Output
Two forthcoming themed issues of the journals Holocaust Studies & Modern Jewish Studies.
More info
Reach out to Arvi Sepp.