From Stratification to Palimpsest: "Palimpsest" as a basic concept in cultural studies

The concept of the palimpsest has increasingly been promoted as a key concept in cultural studies. It captures the horizontal and vertical layers of space and time, and emphasises aspects of mixture, restructuring, disruption, destruction, and loss. Therefore, it replaces metaphors of layering, as recent methodological discourses in archaeology and literary studies attest to. At the same time, it opens new perspectives on cross-sectional topics not only in cultural studies but also in the context of spatial and urban theory as well as with regard to the tension between memory/remembering, discourse, and identity. To further operationalise the concept of the palimpsest within a wider academic framework, it is necessary, on the one hand, to distinguish between a material and a metaphorical notion of the term. On the other hand, it is essential to establish a concept of palimpsestisation as a mediating process category.