Fast-tracking trauma: the phenomenology and the hauntology of cycling around the ghost town Varosha (academic article)

Abstract: Anthropologists have been particularly keen on exploring the phenomenological experiences of people on foot. However, what it feels like to encounter the world on bike has not been a defined area of exploration. This article aims to respond to this gap in literature by exploring the engagements with a ruined built environment on bike and on foot. The ethnographic comparison is located in the war-stricken ghost town Varosha in Cyprus, which has been controversially re-opened to the public for touristic consumption in 2020. The research outcomes offer an insight into the impact of embodied mobility practices on the reception of affective and hauntological stimuli. The selected case studies demonstrate that the biker, through the light-hearted activity of pedalling, affords an escapism from a confrontation with the spectres that haunt the dilapidated buildings, while the walker feels more in touch with their surroundings and the spectral others.

Presented in the Lost Cities workshop at the Central European University, Vienna (2023). Published in the Anthropology of Architecture online journal (2022).

Coffeehouses and The Borderscape

Cycling and Varosha