Shifting regimes of truth. An agonistic perspective on contentious cultural heritages (original) (raw)
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Europe is currently facing challenges that affect the contestation of the meaning of heritage. These challenges for example include: different forms of extremism in Europe, such as radical right and Islamist movements; Eurosceptic attitudes combined with new nationalist agendas; ethnic and religious confrontations; exclusion of minority, immigrant, and refugee groups; and various groups' sense that they do not belong to European societies. These challenges manifest in national, regional, and local discourses on heritage, and in their complex and dissonant relationship to the past, as the chapters by Rob van Laarse and Iris van Huis
Lingue Culture Mediazioni - Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal), 2015
“A common heritage” is a recurrent catchphrase in several conventions, declarations, guidelines and policy documents produced at the supranational European level by a number of institutional actors. The concept draws inspiration from UNESCO’s worldwide celebration of the “outstanding universal value” of great heritage sites, whose property is seen to transcend national boundaries and belong to all humankind. However, as contemporary Europe has many histories, the discursive construction of a common heritage, which implies the reinvention of the past for present political uses, is understandably at odds with the shared experience of European citizenship as multifarious, when not divisive. Against the background of the most significant institutional milestones in Europe’s identity-building narratives, the study moves on to investigate a selection of official documents and cultural programs in which heritage is promoted as a tool for European integration. With the help of Critical Discourse Analysis and heritage studies, the aim is to retrace the conceivable developments of an instrumental concept that has become a strategic presence in the cultural policy of the European Union and is now identified as a key economic driver. Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, cultural heritage, European Union, heritage studies, identity
Governing Heritage Dissonance: Promises and Realities of Selected Cultural Policies
The research explores cultural policies and specific policy tools aimed at working with heritage dissonance and heritage related conflicts created for and implemented within the region of South East Europe (SEE) with the aim of contributing to reconciliation, mutual understanding and peace-building. In analysing conceptual shifts in understanding heritage dissonance within heritage and cultural memory studies and ways in which they are reflected in international policy documents, the research introduces the concept of ‘inclusive heritage discourse’ (IHD) that provides an alternative to the dominant way of understanding and governing heritage – ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (Smith 2006). It argues that understanding heritage within the inclusive heritage discourse brings a different view on the concept of heritage dissonance and the aims, actors and approaches in cultural policies related to heritage. It studies in details four distinctive cases which worked with heritage dissonance developed within and for the SEE region – the transnational nomination for UNESCO World Heritage List of Stećaks, medieval tombstones by the Ministries of Culture of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina; the regional exhibition Imagining the Balkans: Identities and Memory in the Long 19th Century involving museums from 12 SEE countries under the facilitation of the UNESCO Office in Venice; the exhibition Yugoslavia: From the Beginning to the End, an attempt to musealize Yugoslavia through the creation of a permanent display for the Museum of Yugoslav History in Belgrade; and the oral histories archive Croatian Memories (CroMe) implemented by Croatian NGO Documenta – Center for Dealing with the Past. Each of these cases illuminates some of the advantages, limitations and tensions characteristic for the particular discursive frameworks, actors involved and methods used in them. Finally, it concludes by connecting the issues of heritage dissonance, conflicts and human rights to the current European policies related to heritage and to transitional justice, signalling the challenges they pose to the ideas of pluralist, intercultural, peaceful and democratic societies.
Journal of Social Archaeology , 2017
Heritage sites and their stewards have been part of the project of European integration since the 1970s. Countless actions involving conservation, research and public outreach has been granted EU funding based on the ‘European significance’ of monuments and sites or the ‘European added value’ of project activities. This article argues that out of the long relationship between EU cultural politics and the domain of tangible heritage, there has grown a parallel approach to European belonging. By tracing acts of Europe-making in political statements used to justify financial support, and discussing their effect on co-funded archaeological projects, a Janus-face is identified. One side places authority in the past, articulating a European commonality through site characteristics or time periods. The other places authority in the present, promoting a more flexible understanding of heritage. Since the EU has increasingly (and unwillingly) come to share the rhetorical figure of ‘European heritage’ with anti-immigration groups calling for solidarity among ‘native Europeans’, the question of which side takes precedence is of great consequence.
Routledge, 2020
Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discur-sive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and non-participation; and embodiment and affective experience of heritage. Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage , politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe.
The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is 'placing heritage'—affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialization of a European cultural heritage and the production of physical European heritage sites are crucial elements in the policy through which the EU seeks to govern both the actors and the meanings of heritage. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of diverse policy documents and informational and promotional material, this article presents five strategies of 'placing heritage' used in the EU initiatives. In addition, the article presents a theoretical model of circulation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage in the EU heritage policy discourse and discusses the EU's political intents included in the practices of 'placing heritage'.
Values as Politcal Arguments? Alternatives in Europe’s Cultural Heritage
Rotter, L./ Giza A., Krajobraz i Dziedzictwo Kulturowe Europy. Sacrum – Profanum. Prace ofiarowane Księdzu Prof. Dr hab. Józefowi Mareckiemu Kraków 2017., 2017
In order to fulfill these functions, a society needs convinced individuals who are able to live according to a new mentality and corresponding attitudes. Only such individuals are able to build a society which can become a critical-corrective civil society. To use and fight with values as “arguments” in a political debate is a path which is not only not expedient but could also have catastrophic consequences for Europe: Getting stuck in our ossified understanding of these values. Krzysztof Michalski believed that Europe is not simply something found but a task: „Die Frage: Was ist Europa? – ist eine Frage, die ständig aufs Neue gestellt werden muss und nie abschließend beantwortet werden kann – solange Europa Gegenwart ist, nicht bloß Vergangenheit.“ Contemporary questions and problems, therefore, cannot simply be answered according to a „list of values“, but only through the development of a particular attitude which moves between history and the present, according to the principles, which the four pillars suggest.