The Engineering of Empathy: A Spatial Deconstruction of Narrative Scripting and the Commodified Gaze at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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By Ljubica Kamcheva,
London Metropolitan University.
This dissertation interrogates how the physical, architectural and curatorial organisation of Auschwitz-Birkenau actively constructs historical memory for the postmemory generation. Utilising a social-constructivist paradigm and a rigorously structured autoethnographic methodology, the research deconstructs the site not as a static repository of atrocity, but as a manufactured epistemological battleground. By synthesising Henri Lefebvre’s triad of space and Michel Foucault’s disciplinary architecture, the analysis examines the friction between forensic evidence, the curation of victimhood and the relentless pressures of global heritage tourism. The study concludes that the site’s spatial choreography manages the profound tension between historical justice and commodified remembrance, ultimately producing a curated simulacrum of the past that dictates contemporary engagement with the Holocaust.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21790531