1 Introduction
Heritage as Persuasion
KATHRYN LAFRENZ SAMUELS
Against the backdrop of increasing social change, an urgency courses through contemporary life for weaving the past into the present. The process of folding past conditions into present ones is selective; it has to be, given the richly textured inheritance bestowed on each passing generation (Trouillot 1995). The result over the past century plus has been a gradual refining of practices and ways of talking about what came before, encompassed by the concept of ācultural heritage.ā Cultural heritage is variously invoked as something (some object, site, building, landscape, traditional practice) with historic connections that must be properly tended to, as well as the field of expertise that has developed around this care.
Over time, or at critical moments provoked by shifting events, these practices and languages of heritage became incorporated into political and legal institutions with jurisdiction over local, regional (e.g., state), national, or international bodies of governance. National standards have traditionally been the most influential in institutionalizing how heritage is dealt with, but increasingly so too are international norms codified within an expanding oeuvre of global conventions, recommendations, lists, safeguards, management guidelines, and reports picked up as ābest practices.ā This expansion at the national and international level follows broader social trends within which cultural heritage bears increasing relevance. Concomitant with increasing relevance, heritage must be made to work within these systems whose thrust is to norm and generalize. In this volume we offer one particular intervention into these joined processes of expansion and codification within the field of heritage.
We explore the rhetoric of cultural heritage, and we do so in two respects.1 First, we ask how heritage acts as a kind of rhetoric (āheritage as persuasionā), being mobilized creatively within a wide array of social, political, economic, and moral contexts where it gives persuasive force to particular standpoints, perspectives, and claims. This kind of heritage rhetoric can be witnessed especially within appeals to social justice, public sentiment, and the international community, as well as within struggles over cultural resources, where the object or site takes on significance well beyond its more mundane historical value. āHeritage as persuasionā foregrounds the innovative reworking of cultural heritage and its expansive propensities flowing from its will to relevance. Yet, second, to have greatest efficacy such arguments must be made through existing institutional mechanisms and discourses, an existing ārhetoric of heritageā that maps out the strength and range of possible uses and meanings within which cultural heritage can be mobilized. For the ārhetoric of heritage,ā one example would be the āAuthorized Heritage Discourseā (AHD) outlined by Laurajane Smith (2006). However, accounts of AHD run the risk of painting a fairly bleak picture, of a consistent and hegemonic system immune to external challenges and change. Focusing on the ārhetoric of heritageā will tend to emphasize codification and institutionalization. The point is that both sides of rhetoricāheritage as persuasion, and rhetoric of heritage; expansion and codificationāare required in order to better account for change and development in heritage and foreground the creative work of heritage today.
Certain words give resonance to the tasks of heritage. As Raymond Williams (1976; revised and updated by Bennett, Grossberg, and Morris 2005) undertook in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, there are āsignificant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretationā where ācertain uses bound together certain ways of seeing culture and societyā (Williams 1976: 15; quoted in Aldenderfer 2011: 487). We argue that heritage is an important lens for seeing culture and society in the present-day, and this volume addresses certain binding words for heritage, e.g., cultural property, intangible heritage, authenticity. However, the collection here is not exhaustive, nor would it attempt to be. We resist codification insofar as this volume highlights heritage as dynamic and resourceful, and we do so through a focus on rhetoric. Communities or practitioners may actively push back against such attempts at codification, and even succeed in changing the field of heritage practice. Such changes may in turn become the subject of codification. For example, the concept of intangible heritage coalesced as a critique of the material-based focus on built heritage and cultural property, and intangible heritage has since seen elaboration across a suite of international conventions, lists, and sites.
In other words, the process is iterative and open-ended, so any collection on heritage key concepts is necessarily provisional. At the same time, individual keywords gain important advantages from having coherent definitions, when the aim is to work through institutional mechanisms for change. Again, though, we place emphasis on mechanisms of change, and not definitional coherence endstop. Contributors to the volume showcase the creative possibilities of heritage unbound from codifying gestures, rather than attempt a synoptic āauthoritativeā account of the particular heritage keyword under discussion.
We argue that through rhetoric we can begin to theorize and put into practice mechanisms for transforming prevailing heritage vocabularies, encouraging alternate meanings, and innovating new terminologies. Some terms face rhetorical culs-de-sac of sorts, whereby their narrow and increasingly empty usage circumscribes their potential for inspiring a diversity of meanings and perspectives. Other terms bear a rich history of legal and extra-legal uses, and might be characterized by specific institutional mechanisms for altering their legitimate meaning. In these cases extra attention must be paid to such...
