Gabe Kahan

"...rapid obsolescence – what Stallabrass calls an ‘accelerated archaeology’ – held a redemptive, emancipatory dimension, for the process of ruination revealed the ‘truth content’ of a place or object, ‘the critical, utopian moments buried within it.’"

"[some ruins] are left as ‘devalued capital’, presently disused but ripe for future accumulation. Paradoxically, the ruin emerges through this process as a symbol of both failure (of local industry) and of growth (elsewhere, usually overseas)."

"Stoler picks up on this ambivalence in her analysis of ruins as ‘imperial debris’: ruins may be signs of the ‘aftershocks of empire’, but they may also provoke ‘imperial nostalgia’ – as did the ruins of earlier historical periods which became ‘icons of a romantic loss’."

"For González-Ruibal, ruins testify to changing regimes of power and economy, and offer an opportunity to ‘disrupt the signifying chains of legitimacy built upon notions of heritage by engaging with matter, fragments, and spectral traces’."

"Jackson (1980) wrote about the essential ‘interval of neglect’ that precedes the ruin’s reclamation as a symbol of a faded golden age. Since then, many relics of the industrial past have undergone a gradual transformation, shedding their marginal status (as painful reminders -