Engaging with the future of ‘critical heritage studies’: looking back in order to look forward

This article engages with the Association for Critical Heritage Studies Manifesto which argues that heritage studies is in need of a complete renovation. We do so by looking back to two earlier moments. The first when museum studies also called for a renovation, drawing on those experiences as potentially instructive for the immediate future of heritage studies. The second a debate within cultural studies on the value of engagement with the world outside of academia to achieve the discipline’s political aims. Thus, while agreeing with the questions posed by the Manifesto, we argue that rather than casting the terms of the debate in a way that positions the professional field as needing renovation from without, we might do better by fostering a more ‘organic’ sense of intellectual work, one that values engagement and collaboration rather than critique for its own sake. Our conclusion points to the importance of the teaching of heritage studies as a potential site for such a practice as well as more collaborative models of research practice.     

The paradox of ‘Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park’ or how to mock heritage to make heritage

During the last 50 years, and due to the dilapidation of public funds, hundreds of unfinished public works have been erected Italy. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video declared these ruins a formal architectural style – ‘Incompiuto Siciliano’ – and, in doing so, their aim is to change the buildings’ dark side and turn it into something positive. One of the tangible outcomes within the artists’ proposal is the eventual creation of the ‘Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park’ in Giarre, a Sicilian medium-sized village that has the highest density of unfinished public works in Italy. This article analyses how such a provocative project contains serious implications in terms of heritage. It is stated that, in order to forge a positivized ‘unfinished heritage’, Incompiuto Siciliano Archaeological Park builds bridges between aspects that, in principle, seem to be the opposite of each other. This opens the possibility of putting traditional heritage assumptions in question through the production of a critical heritage whose novelty lies in the constructive use of irony, sarcasm and double meaning.     

世界文化遗产保护的东方立场

东方主义思维正借全球化浪潮在世界文化遗产保护领域蔓延。东方文化遗产保护除匆忙应对来自西方的质疑外,当务之急应根据东方文化遗产的特征和保护实际联合建立世界文化遗产保护的东方立场。东方文化遗产除应保护以《威尼斯宪章》为基础的国际惯例中强调的有形文化遗产物质基础外,还应更加突出保护文化遗产蕴含的人类集体记忆、文化基因、文化认同、文化凝聚力等精神内涵。建立世界文化遗产保护的东方立场,有利于通过保护东方文化遗产,继而保护面临西方强势文化同化危险的东方文化。     

A masculinist northern wilderness and the emancipatory potential of literary irony

There has been an increasing body of critical research in modern literary geography claiming that forms of social oppression and injustice can become established through the institution of literature. It has also been stated that literature can equally well act as an emancipatory ‘tool’ through which subjugated histories are rewritten. This article is concerned with the colonialist history of Finnish northern literature, Lapland romanticism, the exoticism of nature and the interrelations of these with masculinism and sexist oppression. It discusses how northern nature is romanticized through literary stereotypes based on masculinist values and a multidimensional social process of sexism, and how the regional marginalization of northern Finland has been justified at the same time. The primary focus is on the emancipatory potential of untraditional northern literature, on a northern female author, Rosa Liksom, who through her unconventional literary irony has functioned as an emancipatory ‘project’ against the masculinist stereotypes of the northern wilderness. Liksom's literary irony serves as a metafictive ‘method’ working in pursuit of revealing its own discursive structure, as a strategy through which literary conventions and their wider social context become deconstructed.     

George eliot as a type of European intellectual∗

The article examines the developments that made the legend of an Asian migration into Europe part of mainstream historiography during the eighteenth century. It was believed that the Norse god Odin was in fact a historical person, who had migrated from Asia to with the north of Europe with his tribe. The significance of this legend to how medieval poetry was received and debated in England has received little attention. The study falls into three sections. The first will trace the significance of the Odin migration legend in discovering Germanic cultural origins. The second section examines the impact of the legend on philological studies, primarily in establishing a new category: the Gothic (i.e. Teutonic/Germanic) poetic tradition. The final section will focus on the debate between two of the most important eighteenth-century pioneers of vernacular poetic tradition: Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton. Their discussion over whether the Asian foundation of Germanic (and thereby English) tradition had paved the way for later Arabian influences is instructive, as it shows how Eastern “others” were negotiated in the discovery of cultural and national roots.     

作为“遗产线路”的文物南迁与“遗产线路”概念再认识

文物南迁是20世纪30至50年代为保护故宫等机构文物而进行的文物大迁徙活动。这次迁徙在20余座城市留下了丰富的史迹遗产和报纸档案资料。文物南迁至今已有近百年历史,期间由于战争与和平、文物价值与文化认同的变迁,南迁之举被不断赋予了新的历史价值和精神文化意义,使得这一历史事件的遗迹可以被放到"遗产线路"的视角下去看待,并对该遗产概念的发展完善具有推动作用。