Profaning GAMA: Exploring the Entanglement of Demilitarization, Heritage and Real Estate in the Ruins of Greenham Common’s Cruise Missile Complex

This article investigates the post-Cold War fate of GAMA, the iconic hardened bunkers complex constructed at RAF Greenham Common, Berkshire, UK in the early 1980s to house newly deployed US nuclear tipped ground launched cruise missiles as part of the Euromissiles crisis. GAMA was then the focal point of international anti-nuclear protest, led by the women peace campaigners who camped just beyond its fences. The article investigates why, despite this prominence and the contemporary inclination towards heritagization, the site has not become a Cold War memorial or tourist attraction. The site’s limbo state is found to be a product of the entanglement of the competing cultural drivers of demilitarization, ruination, heritagization and/or re-utilization. The study concludes (by applying Agamben’s advocacy of profanation) that this limbo may be a fitting denial of the re-sacralization that this site might otherwise have faced, whether as a museum or a fully redeveloped commercial facility.