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2022-1 Difficult Heritage and Public Policies on Memory: Decolonialities, Redemocratizations, and Imperiled Democracies

Editors:
Maria Leticia Mazzucchi Ferreira, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brasil
Paula Godinho, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

This special issue explores the relationship between the proliferation of studies of memory and processes of heritage-making [i.e., the classification of processes, sites, or artifacts as cultural heritage] and the deconstruction of heritages, at a time when topolatry has become commonplace, expressions of memory have multiplied (Nora 1986), and, in a form of inflation (Heinich 2009), everything is now becoming heritage (Chevalier 2000). A new relationship between past, present, and future has been forged, particularly since the 1980s, that has provoked an outbreak of history fever, a type of patrimonial prophesy (Bensa 2001) that is mirrored between the local and the global (Fabre 2001). How can we explain the primacy of memory within the temporal order when the present is already history at the moment that it arrives (Hartog 2003: 127) and is instantly historicized (Hartog 2003: 207)? How many times are we encouraged to protect the place of the past in the public arena, and to confront an usable past (Iordachi & Trensènvi 2003) by conferring upon it the "beauty of death" (de Certeau, Julia & Revel 1990), without at the same time allowing it to help us think of the future? Transforming the past into an emblem or a heritage in the “foreign country” of past time (Lowenthal 1983) entails the amnesic desiccation of memories of epic and exalted moments and of subaltern struggles and victories, as the present renders us powerless or nostalgic (Angé & Berliner 2016). According to Henry Rousso, this obsession with the past is a response that conceals the urgencies of the present or that might even prevent us from projecting ourselves into the future (Rousso 1994: 280).

The public resurgence of memory –“past presents”– is combined with a period that could be described as an absent future, or what Andreas Huyssen calls "futures that are past,” thus excluding the possibility of unknowable futures. Although Maurice Halbwachs had foresightedly founded the field of memory studies (1925, 1950), the interest in the use of the past developed only in the 1980s, for instance with the concept of invention of traditions (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983), with that of sites of memory (Nora 1986), and for the building of the future. According to Reinhardt Koselleck, if an obstacle appears along the "horizon of expectations" of optimistic futures, the "space of experience" is observably refocused on the past (Koselleck 1979). At the same time, this return to the past appears to impede the interrogation of present futures. François Hartog developed the notion of “presentism” to describe this situation, in which the here-and-now becomes a temporal horizon that has no future and no past (Hartog 2003). Presentism comes to the fore (Rousso 2012) and is articulated with the End of History (Fukuyama 1992), in "a past that does not pass" (Rousso & Conan 1994) whose methods, weak or strong (Traverso 2005), are sometimes interwoven (Traverso 2015). According to Zygmunt Bauman, the Angel of History mentioned by Walter Benjamin performed an about-face: the idealized past, a "retrotopia,” offers a refuge and safe space that is nonetheless illusory, while the future itself no longer summons singing tomorrows (Bauman 2017: 8).

Our goal is to assemble studies of the transformation of relationships between past and future through the lens of experiences of heritage-making and exhibits of the past (sites, museums, commemorations) that are related to practices of domination and political violence within colonial or dictatorial processes. We are particularly interested in the ways in which these heritages are built and legitimated, as well as how they are incorporated into postcolonial systems, transitions to democracy, or contexts of democratic fragility such as present-day Brazil. We use Jean Davallon’s (2012) definition of the concept of heritage-making [patrimonialisation], which views it as an intermediate phase between memory as a signifying field and heritage as a complex performative operation. As such, heritage-making enables confronting and deforming the past (Rautenberg 2003), but also transforming it into a space for the emancipation and affirmation of identity boundaries, even attaining an anti-heritage dimension (Alonso 2020).

On the other hand, there is currently an observable convergence of representations and ways of managing the past (Rousso 2014). The internationalization of memory is expressed at the discursive level through the same textual or visual languages, thus forming a shared repertoire with which to transcribe difficult pasts. In this sense, cultural institutions such as museums face the challenge of interrogating and deconstructing their own stable, hegemonic narratives, of demonstrating their crucial role in exposing traumatic pasts (Williams 2007), and of requalifying themselves as tools for promoting catharsis and collective appropriation (Mesnard 2018; Ferreira & Michelon 2015) or forms of memorialization intended to offer symbolic reparations to victims of violence (Moore 2009).

Similarly, monuments and memorial inscriptions in public spaces tied to traumatic pasts are increasingly the focus of conflict and questions about their legitimacy, as recently observed in attempts to remove statues of Christopher Columbus in Boston, Thomas Jefferson in Richmond, Edward Colston in Bristol, and Father António Vieira in Lisbon, an iconoclastic movement that arose amid the furor unleashed by the assassination of George Floyd (Traverso 2020). In Brazil, similar doubts and questions have centered on numerous monuments associated with slavery and the extermination of native populations. Among the more emblematic examples is the Monumento às Bandeiras by the modernist artist Victor Brecheret in São Paulo, which was inaugurated in 1953 to commemorate the centenary of Brazilian independence in 1922. The sculpture, which is comprised of granite blocks, is an allegorical representation of the "bandeirantes” who participated in missions sent by the Portuguese Crown to explore the Brazilian interior and who symbolized São Paulo’s enterprising spirit (Cymbalista 2020). The monument was recently criticized by supporters of the struggle against discrimination and social justice because of the "bandeirantes’" dark history with respect to indigenous populations. Memories surrounding colonial wars and liberation in lusophone Africa have been used in a variety of ways, ranging from younger generations’ doubts to anticolonial critiques, as shown in the book by Miguel Cardina and Bruno Sena Martins (2018), which assembles the points of view originating in former Portuguese colonies and the former metropolis.

Far from the idea of their invisibility and impermeability, as Musil argues (1965) (the same could be said of their role as elements of the national narrative), monuments transform themselves into discursive spaces of conflict and protest, either as memorial references in urban spaces or as symbols of the processes of domination and violence that have prevailed in postcolonial societies. In this case, two operational concepts confront each other: preservation and destruction.

In terms of preservation, the core idea is to use monuments as the basis for a pedagogy of memory and of "heritages that hurt," as Uzzel and Ballartyne (2007) argue, while also maintaining that monuments remain necessary as a basis for reflection. From the opposite perspective, destroying monuments can be understood as a symbolic act of protest against the effects of the past on the present, in order to give voice to those who have always remained distanced from the national narrative. Between memory and "memoricide" (Sulfaro 2014), a variety of lines of thought can be cited in order to consider the role of monuments in contemporary societies.

It is also possible to question memories that do not become heritage and do not correspond to UNESCO’s categories. What difficulties arise in sites of memory of conflictual and traumatic contexts? How should the trauma associated with such events be remembered? What relationship is created between presentism, as a denial of the future, and the uses of memory? In pursuing the topics analyzed by the international ICOM (International Council of Museums) conference on "painful questions” in September 2017 in Helsingborg, Sweden, this special issue dissects heritage processes associated with slavery (for example, the Quai de Valongo in Rio de Janeiro), Portuguese colonialism (Pereira 2020), coloniality and the decolonial (Quijano 2005; Mignolo 2016), and contexts of political violence, such as dictatorial regimes in Portugal, Brazil and the former colonies. The issue also seeks to analyze the relationship of heritage to public memorial policies and anti-colonial constructions (Cardina & Rodrigues 2020) that explicitly serve or induce emancipatory perspectives that construct the future (Louçã 2021; Godinho 2021; Godinho, Samara & Simões 2020; Valencia & Contreras Román 2018; Godinho 2017; Appadurai 2013; Bartra 2016).

Abstracts for articles (500 words) must be sent at the latest by 20 September 2021 to: leticiamazzucchi@gmail.com, p.godinho@fcsh.unl.pt, lusotopie@gmail.com. After acceptance of the abstracts, complete articles are expected by November 20, 2021. Lusotopie publishes articles in French, Portuguese and English.

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