Walz, J. [Review of Reclaiming heritage: alternative imaginaries of memory in West Africa, edited by F. de Jong & M. Rowlands]. Heritage & Society, 3(1), 113-116. (original) (raw)
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To take on a tradition, then, and what is most powerful and gripping within it, one must affirm and contest not only the arguments and claims of tradition but traditional ways of making arguments and claims, of claiming authority, producing evidence, and gaining conviction, traditional modes of receiving and reading the tradition. Hence it is necessary not only to take a critical stance toward the tradition but to adopt a performative strategy with regard to it. Whereas Derrida's texts thus analyse traditional philosophical issues and concepts in order to reveal something untraditional within them, they also perform traditional critical gestures in order to invent other, unprecedented gestures from within them. (Naas 2003: xix-xx) Derrida's strategy of 'taking on a tradition' has obvious implications for the domain of cultural heritage and cultural memory 1 . Written as a 'thought piece', this first chapter deploys this strategy to provide a broad critical rehearsal of the conceptual, intellectual, and moral-ethical issues at stake in selected 'performative moments' of memory-work and the attendant construction of heritage imaginaries. The critical contribution of this chapter is to narrate the historical 'Westernisation' of heritage memory and the challenges made to this discourse as it is confronted by an 'othering' identified as an 'Africanist turn'. Thus my objective in this paper is to use Derrida's critical framework in order to return to selected 'performative moments' within the 'tradition' of African heritage, and, in a further connectivity with Derrida -who, as a Sephardic Jew
Reconsidering Heritage and Memory
Studies of memory in Africa have consistently stressed the contested nature of such practices as commemoration, remembrance, and forgetting. State ritual and personal and group recollections are inevitably situated in a politicized 0 0 9 1 0 0 9 2 context. Richard Werbner speaks of a memory crisis : in postcolonial Africa memory is full of contradictions between the grandiosity of state ceremonialism and popular memory (cf Mbembe 1992; Werbner 1998a). The literature suggests that popular memory is genuine, whereas state ceremony and monuments are mere spectacles of the State. It is undeniable that, as a consequence of colonialism and the impact of European derived models of nationalism, the State in Africa has a tendency to monumentalize itself. Such a policy is reinforced by UNESCO and other agencies that promote heritage technologies for the production of official pasts and futures. However, in this volume we are interested in how memory attaches itself to heritage in often unexpected ways. In this context, we discover a broader principle that modern heritage and memory share a common origin in conflict and loss. Monuments, museums, and memorials are inseparable from the powerful modern moods of nostalgia and longing for authenticity as well as escalating desires for roots and origins. Thus we ask what kind of memorialising tactics and strategies attach themselves to the technologies of heritage. Which memory politics emerge in the context of such more formal institutions and which memories remain hidden and, when deliberately denied, even repressed? The aim of this volume is to examine how heritage technologies are appropriated for the recognition of past suffering and the creation of futures of hope. 13
The Politics of Heritage in Africa
2015
The Politics of Heritage in Africa offers a wide-ranging analysis of how heritage has been defined in Africa and of the ongoing significance of heritage work on the continent. In presenting their project in this manner, the authors differentiate it from scholarship focused more narrowly on heritage as museum studies, and they illuminate domains outside the museum which may be understood as contributing to heritage as a form of knowledge production, including scientific disciplines and performing arts. The volume focuses primarily on Ghana and South Africa, two countries which have aggressively marketed violent pasts (the transatlantic slave trade and apartheid, respectively) to international audiences and yet whose different circumstances illuminate qualities of the African heritage economy that extend beyond particular national contexts. Chapters are organised around essays written by 15 scholars, including several who have actively participated in heritage institutions in Africa while working as academics in history and related disciplines.
Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 2015
This paper argues that the broadening over time of definitions of heritage has had strong implications for researchers working in East Africa today. Moving away from material preservationist issues of concern to governments and international heritage bodies, most scholars have recently focused their research on the entanglement of heritage with memory, politics, identity and social healing processes. They also increasingly investigate the growing agency and centrality of civil society stakeholders, as well as the negotiation of power and authority between the different levels — local, national, international — involved in heritage making and heritage promotion. Focusing on the case of slavery and the slave trade, the rise of civil society engagement and the contestations that continue to swirl around the commemoration of liberation heroes, the paper depicts how heritage and memory have become a site of struggle — symbolically, ethically and emotionally charged — in today’s East Africa.
African Cultural Heritages: The Political Performances of Objects
Call for papers for a special issue of the French journal Politique africaine. Deadline for submission of proposals: 1st November 2020 " The gestures and “heritage emotions” (Fabre 2013) of politicians such as Georges Pompidou, Jacques Chirac and Emmanuel Macron in France have been extensively analysed and commented on, as have those of a handful of their African counterparts, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor (Harney 2004) and, to a lesser extent, Menelik II (Sohier 2012), Kwame Nkrumah (Hess 2001; Lentz 2017), Mobutu Sese Seko (White 2006; Malaquais 2008; Van Beurden 2015) and King Njoya (Geary 1994; Galitzine-Loumpet 2016). However, what do we actually know about the way African heads of state and their advisers, high-ranking officials and other political figures and activists considered the political role of heritage or, at a micro level (which is the scope of this issue) of sets of objects, from a personal, national and international perspective during the colonial and postcolonial periods? How did they and do they act on the definition of objects and their trajectories, thus creating the conditions for new layers of meaning (Kopytoff 1986)? At the same time, how do popular practices inform, inflect and appropriate these object conceptions in a back-and-forth dynamic?"
Talking Heritage: Africa at the Crossroads of Tradition and Modernity
2013
This paper address the question: given the ethical imperatives of today’s world, could traditional building heritage realistically make any fresh contributions to an alternative development model? The above questions are explored via a dialectics between the traditional earth building methods and modernity as widely understood in Uganda. Heritage is conceptualised as constitutive of interactions between processes, products and people, and the environment. The paper tests the conjecture that, claims to culture and its preservation, constitute a multi-layered veil which advertently or inadvertently obstructs Ugandans from comprehending and making the deep structural changes required to re/produce their desired architecture and lifestyles. Key words: Heritage, modern architecture, critical regionalism, museology, Uganda, sustainability Resume Ce document traite de la question : compte tenu des imperatifs ethiques du monde d’ aujourd’hui , patrimoine de construction traditionnelle pourr...
Introduction to the topic. African heritage: Denaturalizing objects, untangling the political
Politique africaine, 2022
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CFP | African Cultural Heritages: The Political Performances of Objects | Politique africaine
Call for papers for a special issue of the French journal Politique africaine. Deadline for submission of proposals: 1st November 2020 ❊❊❊ The gestures and “heritage emotions” (Fabre 2013) of politicians such as Georges Pompidou, Jacques Chirac and Emmanuel Macron in France have been extensively analysed and commented on, as have those of a handful of their African counterparts, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor (Harney 2004) and, to a lesser extent, Menelik II (Sohier 2012), Kwame Nkrumah (Hess 2001; Lentz 2017), Mobutu Sese Seko (White 2006; Malaquais 2008; Van Beurden 2015) and King Njoya (Geary 1994; Galitzine-Loumpet 2016). However, what do we actually know about the way African heads of state and their advisers, high-ranking officials and other political figures and activists considered the political role of heritage or, at a micro level (which is the scope of this issue) of sets of objects, from a personal, national and international perspective during the colonial and postcolonial periods? How did they and do they act on the definition of objects and their trajectories, thus creating the conditions for new layers of meaning (Kopytoff 1986)? At the same time, how do popular practices inform, inflect and appropriate these object conceptions in a back-and-forth dynamic?