Broadly speaking, we are interested in studying the material, aesthetic and epistemological traces of colonial and post-independence violence (or ‘debris’, in the words of Ann Stoler) in light of the contemporary context, but propose to do so from the specific angle of how certain spaces, which were once sites of political violence and terror – in their different biopolitical forms of confrontation, persecution, massacre, exploitation, destitution, etc. –, are semanticized in the contemporary space of postcolonial heritage articulations.