Suchergebnisse

Introduction : the stakes of heritage and the politics of culture -- A political history of Palestinian heritage -- Government through heritage in old Hebron -- Heritage, NGOs, and state-making -- Palestinian national museums post-Oslo -- Conclusion : cultural governmentality and activist statehood

Heritage is a key site of politics in the Middle East. Recent episodes of the relentless destruction and construction of heritage in the region convey just how deeply intertwined it is with the making (and unmaking) of the postcolonial state. In Palestine/Israel, heritage has developed over a long history into an important site where both state power and resistance against it are produced, reshaped, and disseminated. A current proliferation of urban regeneration projects there is linked to the struggle against the ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, as well as the incomplete, truncated emergence of a Palestinian state. Most of these heritage projects are carried out by semi- or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In this essay, I argue for the value of thinking about heritage in terms of government and state-making, or more precisely in terms of a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality, to reveal the kind of work it performs in Palestine and beyond. States govern also by heritage, and both states and the local communities they attempt to control mobilize the language of heritage for a variety of different purposes in a variety of different settings. What is distinctive about Palestine is the central role NGOs play in the institutionalization of a heritage field. In their work, they collapse the divide between mobilizing heritage to defend vulnerable communities and resist the encroachment of the (Israeli) state, and using heritage to develop institutions and help build the (Palestinian) state.

AbstractThis article aims to illuminate the ways in which artists and cultural producers can participate in forging the nation(‐state) by performing its institutions, and by mocking its operations. It explores two experiments in setting up a Palestinian national museum, which are also art projects in themselves. It also discusses the recent Palestinian art biennials, organised by a Palestinian non‐governmental organisation in 2007 and 2009 in various locations across the Mediterranean. It is my argument that the experiments with the Palestinian national museum and the biennials constitute a kind of artistic practice that does not just represent or imitate the social world: they are artistic practices that purport to produce new social arrangements – in particular, a set of new 'state' (art and cultural) institutions under conditions of statelessness. I also discuss how such a tactic of anticipatory representation, which calls into being, by representing them beforehand, institutions that do not yet (fully) exist, bears resemblance with recent policies adopted by the Palestinian political establishment.

ABSTRACT Beyond the commonsense dichotomy between art as radical practice and heritage as conservation, this article analyzes Palestinian heritage as the ambiguous terrain where these two practices meet, creating a language that is both locally rooted and cosmopolitan. By examining the recent Palestinian artbiennales(biennials), I show how heritage‐informed art functions as a platform for performing the future Palestinian nation‐state. Organized by a heritage organization, the biennales highlight the creativity of a new generation of Palestinian heritage NGOs, which continue a local social‐organizing tradition marked by the alliance between heritage, the arts, and liberation politics. This cultural production undermines a traditional dichotomy between heritage and counter‐memory because it represents both part of a state‐building project and an act of anticolonial resistance, suspended between what scholars term "transnational governmentality" and "counter‐governmentality." I argue that Palestinian heritage practices constitute a form of nonstate governmentality. In this context, problems of representation acquire strong relevance.

European Memory in Populism explores the links between memory and populism in contemporary Europe. Focusing on circulating ideas of memory, especially European memory, in contemporary populist discourses, the book also analyses populist ideas in sites and practices of remembrance that usually tend to go unnoticed. More broadly, the theoretical heart of the book reflects upon the similarities, differences, and slippages between memory, populism, nationalism, and cultural racism and the ways in which social memory contributes to give substance to various ideas of what constitutes the 'people' in populist discourse and beyond.

Bringing together a group of political scientists, anthropologists, and cultural and memory studies scholars, the book illuminates the relationship between memory and populism from different angles and in different contexts. The contributors to the volume discuss dominant notions of European heritage that circulate in the public sphere and in political discourse, and consider how the politics of fear relates to such notions of European heritage and identity across and beyond Europe and the European Union. Ultimately, this volume will shed light on how notions of a shared European heritage and memory can be used not only to include and connect Europeans, but also to exclude some of them.

Investigating the ways in which nationalist populist forces mobilize the idea of a shared, homogeneous European civilization, European Memory in Populism will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of European studies, heritage and memory studies, migration studies, anthropology, political science and sociology.

Chapters 1, 4, 6, and 10 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives 4.0 license.

How do memories circulate transnationally and to what effect? How can we understand the enduring role of national memories and their simultaneous reconfiguration under globalization? This book charts the rich production of memory across and beyond national borders, thus giving new insight into the role of memory in the contemporary world

This chapter reflects on the paradox of Eurosceptic populists critical of the
European Union mobilizing ideas of European values, heritage, and civilization.
We examine the role of the past and especially of a certain understanding
of 'European heritage' in far-right-wing populist, nationalist discourse in
Europe today.