Co-organizers: Dr Rishika Mukhopadhyay (Durham University), Aditi Das (Northumbria University), Arunima Ghoshal (De Montfort University, Leicester)
In the past few years, heritage practice in South Asia has followed two broad registers of loss and recovery dominated by heritage professionals, heritage conservators, architects, transnational and local civil society groups, political leaders and some community groups. This anxiety of losing one’s ‘heritage’ has been co-opted by the institutional apparatus as it launched into repackaging, revamping and in essence recovering heritage through the rhetoric of conservation, restoration, regeneration and adaptive reuse. We observe and note a series of government-led heritage recovery projects from India, where the three of us have researched different aspects of heritage sensibility for a long time. From Chandi Chowk (Old Delhi/Shahjahanabad) redevelopment project to Kashi Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi to Jalianwala Bagh memorial renovation in Punjab, the State has subscribed to a form of heritage recovery which in part is predicated on erasure, demolition and destruction of the organic fabric of everyday life as well as existing architectural assets (for instance, the Central Vista project) in Indian cities. These heritage redevelopment projects are playing on the aspirational politics of aesthetic governance (Ghertner 2015) that amplify and perpetuate colonial and neoliberal logics of conservation and redevelopment by displacement (both material and immaterial spaces).
This trend, however, is not new as historically heritage has been bureaucratically managed and carefully curated all over the world. We also note that in response to these top-down large scale projects a number of community engagement initiatives supported by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and developmental agencies have proliferated to conserve the ‘living heritage’ of the people (see, Chalana and Krishna 2020). There is also scholarly work on multiple layers and meanings of monuments and sites contesting a universal understanding of static heritage in South Asia (Ray 2018).
Moving beyond these trends we propose to unsettle the ontology of heritage itself in the postcolony. Our understanding of the postcolony is not limited to the spaces where the present is shaped by the colonial past, but rather, following Raghuram, Noxolo and Madge (2013) we consider the permeable boundaries of the postcolony and look into spaces that are produced by continued forms of colonial power relation/coloniality (Quijano, 2007). In doing so, we imagine these spaces to be intertwined with their shared commitment towards antihegemonic politics. We ask, therefore, can heritage be ever-evolving and ‘becoming’ through past-presencing (Macdonald 2013)? How can we contest the meaning of loss and think of loss as a generative way of producing new forms of heritage (Holtrof, 2015; Rico, 2016; De Silvey & Harrison, 2020)? Does the trope of recovery through redevelopment and community engagement engender contemporary forms of heritage which interrogates the ontological nature of heritage itself?
The panel seeks to unpack the socio-political dynamics and contradictions between loss and erasure on one hand and, recovery and (re)production of heritage ontologies, on the other. We invite papers that speak to, but are not limited to the following themes:
● Normative and nationalistic rhetoric of heritage recovery
● Recovering, reshaping and (re)imagining postcolonial future through transnational linkages
● Nostalgic ruminations around forgotten and abandoned spaces as heritage
● Postcolonial subjectivities in shaping heritage practices of loss and recovery
● Heritage as a mode of social recovery and community resilience during crisis
● Intimate, affective and emotional geographies of postcolonial heritage
● Loss of living heritage and recovery through creative economies
● Epistemic assumptions behind heritage as a thing to be conserved
● Contradictions between unstable past and usable past
We warmly welcome contributions particularly from PGRs and ECRs who write from and engage with postcolonial heritage sensibilities and question caste based, racialised and heteropatriarchal modes of heritage. We encourage contributions which are not limited to paper presentations and experiment with creative as well as engaged forms of research output. The session format is flexible following the Chair’s statement on inclusivity and safety.
Please email your abstracts of 250 words by Sunday, 20th March to:
Rishika Mukhopadhyay: [log in to unmask]
Aditi Das: [log in to unmask]
Arunima Ghoshal: [log in to unmask]
References
Chalana, M., & Krishna, A. (2020). Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India: Approaches and Challenges. Routledge.
DeSilvey, C., & Harrison, R. (2020). Anticipating loss: Rethinking endangerment in heritage futures. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 26(1), 1–7.
Ghertner, A. (2015).Rule By Aesthetics: World-Class City Making in Delhi. Oxford University Press
Holtorf, C. (2015). Averting loss aversion in cultural heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(4), 405–421.
Macdonald, S. (2013). Memorylands: Heritage and identity in Europe today. Routledge.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178.
Raghuram, P., Noxolo, P., & Madge, C. (2014). Rising Asia and postcolonial geography. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 35(1), 119–135.
Ray, H. P. (2018). Decolonising heritage in South Asia: the Global, the National and the Transnational. Routledge India.
Rico, T. (2016). Constructing Destruction: Heritage Narratives in the Tsunami City. Routledge.