The Limits of Experience: Suffering, Nazi Forced Labor Camps, and Archaeology

As Adorno argued, one of the most fundamentally human experiences is suffering. However, a comparative archaeology of human experience that focuses on suffering raises troubling ethical issues. We draw on our excavations of World War II Nazi-run forced labor camps at the Tempelhof airfield in Berlin to demonstrate the need to confront suffering archaeologically and, at the same time, the ultimate impossibility of speaking for and about the suffering of others. We argue that thematizing the ambivalence of suffering and the material remains associated with it allows us to draw attention to this paradox and open a space that acknowledges the suffering of people in the past.