Le forme della memoria. Immanenza del luogo e trascendenza del culto/ The forms of memory. Place immanence and ritual transcendence

Is it possible for the transmission of intangible cultural heritage to occur linearly without the influence of place? Starting from this question, the paper intends to discuss culture in terms of ritual, addressing the theme of places dedicated to its transmission through the spaces dedicated to the memory of the dead. Indeed, this specific circumstance prompts a close examination of the issue and the encounter between cultural and geographical data: between the transcendence of cult and the immanence of place. Looking deeper, we will see how this encounter does not so much relate to two opposing and complementary factors, such as culture and place, but rather two geographies. As much as culture may appear to be a transcendent fact, it takes form for physical reasons that concern the nature of places. In their common root, profoundly linked to the earth (both derive from the Latin verb indicating the action of cultivation), “culture” and “cult” betray an intrinsic relationship with place. The process of forming cultures transmutes the concrete datum into a universal value, making their transmission possible. Thus, the intention is to examine the places of remembrance in this migration process and their readaptation to distant geographical conditions, while also examining constants and variables within the context of cemetery architecture. Through dialectical reasoning, distant examples like the cemetery of Eyüp in Istanbul and the cemetery of Altach, situated in the shadow of the Swiss Alps, will be related.