Élise Féron Explores the ‘Absent Presence’ of WWI Soldiers in Recent Publication in The Philosopher

In this piece published early November in the Philosopher, Élise Féron reflects on the “absent presence” of the more than 100,000 British soldiers who died in the Westhoek region of Flanders in Belgium during the First World War, and whose bodies have never been found or identified. As either nameless bodies buried under a standardised headstone, or bodiless names engraved in stone, these missing soldiers are re-incarnated and re-presented in a myriad of ways, in museums, monuments and shops selling paraphernalia related to the First World War. They are also remembered through personal and deeply embodied forms of mourning, which try to reinstate the individualities silenced by official forms of memorialisation.