In the current globalised world of the twenty-first century, cultural heritage has been piling up; we now have more buildings and objects worth preserving than ever. What was considered last century’s modern architecture is seen as today’s relics of a bygone era. They often become an obstacle to urban planning on account of their maintenance costs and inadaptability to modern development. How can we preserve cultural heritage in the face of destruction and modernity? Several discussions surrounding this topic have emerged, including the problem of cultural continuity, unconventional ways of conservation, and historical silences around negative memory and reparations.
What is Heritage?
The explicit meaning, as the word implies, is that of a precious property inherited from the past generations because of its economic and spiritual value. Arguably, this definition is a very broad one, contributing to the interpretation that the meaning of cultural heritage has become too general. There are, however, two more specific forms of cultural heritage according to UNESCO, which are tangible and intangible heritage. Both represent two sides of the same coin and both are directly involved in building a nation’s identity, as expressions of a common history, cultural background, value system and collective memory. Monuments, buildings, and artefacts are therefore the so-called tangible proof of the underlying, intangible beliefs, traditions, stories, practices, and values of a nation.
“This dominant Western discourse stresses materiality, monumentality, grandiosity, time depth, aesthetics and all that is ‘good’ in history and culture.”
In the midst of this, there is the growing need in several East-Asian nations to build a new society on the ruins of the old; the question is whether to cut away from the olden days and build anew or to hold onto a physical memento of the past that could be standing in the way of progress.
In Japan, for instance, there seems to be a reluctance to represent linear time in their cultural heritage. This is due to the irresistible lure of the rise of modernization (and ultimately Westernization) in Meiji Japan (1868−1910), which was a direct negation of their past. Many traditional objects, customs, and buildings were abandoned surprisingly quickly and easily, as seen by the nationwide destruction of Buddhist temples and castles in the early Meiji period. When the Japanese consequently realised that their ancient objects were actually worthy of preservation because of their historical value, even though they could not be easily connected to the future envisioned by the constant development and modernisation, they started setting them aside and preserving them. Japan deals with this issue of historical heritage through a ‘different conceptualisation of time’.
As a strong element in the building of national identity, heritage (and its conservation) is often charged with meanings that can change as a result of political shifts within a nation. Myanmar is currently at a historical, yet fragile transitional stage in its development; it is a nation that has been virtually frozen in time for approximately 60 years. However, Myanmar’s cultural heritage is an asset that nobody has properly valued nor yet utilised. Since the 1962 military takeover – particularly after the 1990s – there has been a vacuum in the field of heritage conservation and now most archaeological sites sit in ruinous conditions due to long periods of neglect. The laws on cultural heritage before and during the regime were mostly disregarded or selectively implemented to bolster the legitimisation of the military junta and serve its political ambitions.
Much sharper is the question of what to do with a heritage that reminds the citizens of a painful or distressing period. Taking heritage attractions in Korea built in the Japanese colonial period as an example, there is scope to understand the overwhelming sense of national identity. While many relics of colonisation have been removed since the liberation from Japan in 1945, some colonial-era sites are officially preserved as registered modern cultural heritage or tourist attractions. The interpretation of cultural heritage attractions being strongly associated with the colonising past has been frequently linked to the high level of Korean nationalism, and can illustrate the intersection of heritage, nationalism, and painful memories.
By recognizing too much material heritage, we cling desperately to the fact that we have physical proof of our existence, negative or positive, particularity in the face of a world that is globalising at a tremendous speed. Many cultures especially in Asia, Africa and South America are said to suffer a heritage gap when it comes to material heritage – either because of colonial looting, or because many cultures don’t preserve physical relics of the past. But is this really a ‘gap’?
Oral History and History from Below: A Way to Bridge the Heritage Gap
Material heritage may be the most conventional way of conserving history, but many cultures have avoided it. There is more than one way to preserve the past after all. Stories of historical events are often made up of many layers and in order for them to be understood in all their unedited expression, they have to be narrated.
In the documentary Ghosts of Amistad, Rediker goes to Sierre Leone in pursuit of recovering a lost history from below. The documentary itself displays an uncovering of the hidden side of the Amistad rebellion story; the African side. This hidden side of the story took patience and persistence (and linguistic as well as cultural interpreting) to piece together, which can often be the case when it comes to oral history from below. The Amistad story, especially, was something that was only known to the elders in Sierra Leone. What Rediker came to understand in the process of making Ghosts of Amistad could be that the history made by working people can be recovered outside the formal archive, in the stories passed from one generation to another. Historiography and heritage can often have certain (often subconscious) silences that are lost in the process of preserving historical narratives. History from below can bridge the gap these silences have created and recover some of the missing voices in the historical narrative.
It could be interesting to further explore this theme of working-class histories of Atlantic slavery by investigating how history from below can offer historians a ‘living memory’ of narratives that are often silenced or overlooked. In other words, what can be valuable in placing power relations under the lens of a historian from below, especially when it comes to narratives involving rebellions and revolutions?
History from below is a very ideal way to study power relations in the historical narrative, because it is a rhetorical expansion of understanding working-class people and the working-class struggle in the political narrative, especially with studying feminist works and slavery and revolutions.
The Bhoodan Movement, also known as the Land Gift Movement, took place in the 1950s and 1960s in post-independence India. Vinoba Bhave, a prominent disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, initiated the Bhoodan Movement with the aim of addressing land-related issues and promoting social justice. The movement sought to redistribute land from wealthy landowners to landless peasants voluntarily. History from below in the context of the Bhoodan Movement offers a living memory of the narratives of landless peasants and marginalised communities. Their stories and struggles, which might be overlooked in traditional historical narratives, become central to the understanding of this movement.
Minorities are often overlooked when it comes to forms of resistance and a bottom-up perspective can raise important questions about how societies can navigate the complexities of heritage preservation, particularly when faced with conflicting narratives, painful histories, and the evolving nature of national identity. This is an integral stepping stone to bridge that heritage gap and restore what has been silenced (where there was no material heritage to conserve) in the historical narrative.
Anusha Paul
