HERITAGE FROM BELOW

 

 

 

The title of this year’s Micropolitics seminar is a syntagm borrowed from historian Ian J. Robertson. Robertson defines heritage as “people – collectivity and individuals – and their sense of inheritance from the past and the uses to which this sense of inheritance is put”. The concept of heritage from below, according to Robertson, stems from the presumption that, although it is not a financially independent process, “there exist uses of the past in the present that are only minimally related to the economic and that such uses can function as cultural resources for counter hegemonic expressions”. His critique of contemporary academic production related to the theory of heritage, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that the aforementioned production is “seduced, more often than not, by the nationalist, top-down, commercial and tourism-focussed perspectives of the mainstream manifestations of heritage that together constitute a hegemonic discourse”. The lectures in our seminar seek to define the ways in which the acceptance of the above and similar critical interpretations of heritage is manifested in different European settings, various disciplines that traditionally deal with the interpretation and mediation of the knowledge of past cultures (archaeology, art history, museology), and the possibilities of conceptualising heritage from below under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism.

 

 

 

 

Xurxo Ayán Vila, Rui Gomes Coelho: Arheology of the Spanish civil war: conflict, memory and social justice

 

 

 

10.00 - 10.30 AM Ivana Hanaček, Sanja Horvatinčić: Introduction

 

SESSION I

10.30 - 11.00 AM Rui Gomes Coelho: Politics of Heritage

11.00 - 11.30 AM Josipa Lulić: Nation and Archeological Heritage

11.30 - 11.45 AM discussion

SESSION II

12.00 - 12.30 PM Xurxo Ayán Vila: Brothers in arms: Arheologists and The Spanish civil war

12.30 - 13.00 PM Andrew Lawler: The people’s liberation struggle as an “unclaimd” heritage in Bosnia & Hercegovina

13.00 - 13.15 PM discussion

13.15 - 14.00 lunch

 

SESSION III

14.00 - 14.15 Documentary movie “Drežnica” (r. Slavko Goldstein)

14.15 - 14.45 Sanja Horvatinčić: “Liberated partisan territory as community heritage: History and social memory of the Peoples’ liberation war in Drežnica

14.45 - 15.15 Helena Stublić: “Unwanted” Heritage in Croatia? Misinterpretation of the Term

15.15 - 16.00 Final discussion

 

 

 

Organised field trip to Drežnica and the surrounding area, and the memorial complex at the site of the Partisan Hospital no.7 at Mala Javornica. Departure from Zagreb at 9.00 AM; returning in the evening. Reservation should be sent by e-mail at: blok@blok.hr.

 

 

programme editor: Sanja Horvatinčić

design: Nikola Križanac