EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHY Authenticity, Embodiment and Cultural Heritage

The intention in this article is to propose an alternative to the modernist structural manner of referring to and representing the Holocaust. The alternative is based on performative paradigms in tourist research and on the reading of Peter Eisenmann's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a cultural heritage site in the center of Berlin. In places of remembrance such as Auschwitz-Birkenau the place is the scene ofthe crime but in the emotional geography of Peter Eisenmann the visitor experiences a cool authenticity, a light physical inscription in the cultural heritage. Contrary to the consuming of places which the gazing tourist perform the witnessing visitor invests bodily in this place and this investment becomes the coin of exchange with the past.