MA Week 16 - Heritage as a critical perspective (1)

I have been wrestling for a while now with this idea of my critical perspective, and to try to make some sense I got a couple of likely-sounding books from the library, then left them in my bag while I got on with exciting stuff like printing and painting. I’ve had a recall for one and so last night I sat down to skim read it with a view to copying the most important bits. In the end I read the first two chapters, not in their entirety, but closely enough to make me realise this is an important book for me. 

The book is “Heritage : Critical Approaches” by Rodney Harrison and it has given words to some of the things I’ve been doing creatively. To find this academic validation of what I’m doing has been a joy, a relief and a boost to my creative confidence.  Below is a synopsis of what I consider to be the most pertinent points of what I’ve read, and a discussion including how I think it speaks to my practice follows here. Whilst I hope to read more of the book over the coming weeks, I think Harrison’s introduction to his approach in the first two chapters gives me a grounding that that stands for itself. 

Synopsis of pertinent points from "Heritage : Critical Approaches",

Chapters 1 & 2

Heritage, argues Harrison, has proliferated as a result of “the process of globalisation, deindustrialisation and the rise of the experience economy”, but it remains a “broad and slippery” term that can cover buildings, monuments, memorials, songs, festivals, languages and so on (pp4,5). He sees it not as object-based, but rather as “dialogical” – heritage emerges from the relationship between people, objects, places and practice. It therefore involved in the production of local, regional and national identity (p8). Harrison’s view does not distinguish between “natural” and “cultural” heritage, but he does distinguish between “official” heritage – e.g. the archaeological significance of Stonehenge – and “unofficial” heritage – e.g. the use of Stonehenge for festivals by neo-pagans (p15). The “unofficial” is really used to describe people’s attachment to a place, for whatever reason that might arise. Heritage refers to set of attitudes and relationships with the past – relationships that need to be formed and maintained (p14). However, it is not primarily about the past – it is created in the present by sifting the past and using it as a perspective to view the present and to inform the future (p4).

So why the surge of interest in heritage?  Culture and traditions only seem to become “heritage” when they are at risk. Heritage has not traditionally concerned itself with the “everyday” unless it is at risk of loss, when it becomes more remarkable. (p 18). Harrison suggests the surge is down to modernity, which he defines as a kind of social order that looks to the future and is concerned with novelty, progress, and speed, and which takes a linear view of time (so we are always moving away from the past). The speed of change means there is always a threat to the present. If Harrison’s idea of “risk” is correct (and it seems reasonable to me), then the past is always at risk and starts to become heritage; the speed of progress leads to obsolescence and nostalgia (p23-25). So heritage concerns itself with a loss of or threat to objects, places and practices that hold a collective value.  Further, modernity is inherently disordered due to the rate of change and so heritage seeks to impose a structure or classification on items, such as is done in museums. We structure and restructure the past. 

Harrison also introduces various further ideas. The two most relevant to me are:

“Agency”, where he believes that “collectives” of humans and non-humans interact to make heritage. Humans use non-humans to do their will; humans invent objects to do their will (Agency is evidently not seen as an act of individual will). Different agencies can mix, merge and interact in many different ways (p 33/36) 

Similarly, “Symmetrical archaeology” is concerned with the entanglement of humans and things. It suggests the past is actively created by archaeologists. Harrison expands this to include all other disciplines involved in heritage studies, to purport that heritage is a product of not only the human imagination, but the entanglement of humans and objects, pasts and presents.(p 37/38).