Burning Flags and Toppling Generals
In the summer of 2017, Charlottesville , VA, was the scene of violent riots. The direct cause was local governmentās decision to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee , which provoked a protest march of white nationalists. Human rights and anti-racism movements immediately reacted with counter-marches. In the ensuing riots, a car drove into a group of protesters, killing one and injuring nineteen. The events soon evolved into an intense national debate on the question whether Confederate monuments are āsymbols of hate or heritageā (Kenning 2017). President Donald Trump blamed both sides for the riots, publicly asking whether statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be next to be toppled (Shear and Haberman 2017). Since the riots statues, plaques and even stained-glass windows depicting Confederate generals, politicians, and judges have been removed from the public space in no less than 26 cities. All in all, almost 40 monuments commemorating the Confederation have been removed by local administrations, acting either on their own accord or reacting to local communitiesā demands. In a few rare cases, they have been removed by the protesters themselves (Carbone 2017; New York Times 2017). Confederate flags have been burnt as well, sometimes as part of art projects aimed at opening up the debate on racism and attributes symbolizing the Confederacy (Thrasher 2015). Yet, at the same time, there seems to be a rise in repositioning dismantled monuments on privately owned lands and in erecting new ones (Tavernise 2017).
The toppling of statues is not unique to the USA. The year 2015 saw the emergence of the #RhodesMustFall movement in South Africa. In March of that year, a student of the University of Cape Town threw excrement at a statue of Cecil Rhodes , founder of former Rhodesia who was linked to apartheid by protesters. Not long after, the statue was removed by government and a nationwide discussion emerged on the ways in which society deals with monuments, which painfully symbolize racial divides (Shankar 2017).
These recent examples of iconoclasm in the USA and South Africa illustrate how statues can become focal points in processes of ācultural contestation ā. Some groups connect them to positive (hi)stories and use them as building blocks for identity formation. Others see them as witnesses to a dark (hi)story of (post)-colonialism , racism, and social exclusion , to which equally strong feelings are attached. The ensuing claims on the past, the present, and the future lead to fierce societal debates. During such intense cultural contestation, government is often explicitly looked to for guidance. Yet, the various roles it plays in such instances are understudied.
Contested Heritage
Obviously, at the core of cultural contestation is ācultural heritageā. In this book, which is positioned explicitly in the growing stream of critical heritage studies, heritage is defined not as āa thingā, but as a social and cultural practice , enacted by communities and individuals, in which histories are selected or rejected (compare Smith 2006). Such āhistories ā can be connected to objects, landscapes, and cultural expressions and traditions .
Cultural heritage, thus, has to do with meaning-giving . Both the tangible and the intangible are meaningless in themselves. It is the (hi)stories surrounding traditions and artifacts that enact them, which is why heritage is a social construction. When, in processes of meaning-giving , objects and cultural expressions are labeled āheritageā, conservation measures might be taken to save them for future generations. The opposite is also possible, though, when meaning-giving takes a different turn (Graham et al. 2016; Graham and Howard 2008).
As heritage has to do with selecting and neglecting (hi)stories that give meaning to objects and traditions, it is a discursive practice in which some (hi)stories become dominant and institutionalized to the exclusion of others (Hall 2005: 25; Waterton et al. 2006). Smith (2006) draws our attention to the existence of an āAuthorized Heritage Discourseā (AHD ), arguing that it is this that constructs heritage practices and the way we perceive heritage in the Western world and even worldwide. AHD focuses on the great moments of national histories and selects tangible and intangible heritage representing exactly these. Because of this, heritage is bound up with processes of identity formation . The great histories of national pasts are not chosen without reason. They are carefully selected expressions of an envisioned national identity (Lowenthal 1985, 1998). At both national and local levels, these narratives give meaning to objects and landscapes, providing communities who relate to them with a sense of place and belongingness (see, e.g., Jones 2005; Waterton 2005). As a consequence, heritage practices have material effects in what is and what is not labeled as heritage and hence preserved or demolished. More importantly, they have social effects as well, in terms of inclusion and exclusion .
Heritage is a zero-sum game (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). There are winners and losers, in various different ways. Certain narratives are articulated and become dominant, resulting in objects and cultural traditions being authorized as heritage, at the cost of others. There are those who successfully claim heritage, and those who fail in their attempts, which results in the drawing of demarcation lines between those who belong and those who donāt (Smith 2006; Waterton 2010; Graham et al. 2016).
Because there are always several, often conflicting , meanings, which are bestowed on heritage, it is always dissonant (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). Heritage is claimed for different uses and with different purposes by individuals, groups, communities, nations, and states. As the heritage of one group canāt be that of another, different forms of contestation come into being. Legal fights over ownership are not uncommon, not even between states as the case of the Parthenon Marbles illustrates (Harrison 2010: 174ā182). Economic considerations and the daily practical use of heritage can also be the cause of dissonance . An agricultural landscape , for example, is exactly that to farmersāa means for agricultural productionāwhereas the same landscape can be labeled as cultural and historical heritage by landscape historians and planners. An example of this is the discussion surrounding the placing of the Dutch Noordoostpolder on the UNESCO World Heritage List (Rodenberg 2015). Yet, dissonance can also flow from a heritageās troubled history. There might be feelings of unease that are inherent to it. Holocaust memorials are a prime example, and discussions can arise on how to deal with such ādark heritage ā (Logan and Reeves 2009). Dissonance runs deeper when identity formation and processes of social inclusion and exclusion come into play, as we have seen with the statues in the above.
Although heritage is always potentially contested, this contestation is not always played out. Yet, as soon as feelings of not belonging become too strong and are articulated in p...