2011, No. 1-2 (1), Preliminaries

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Ewa Klekot
Prolegomena to Ethnography of “Monuments of History and National Culture”. Heritage as a Mode of Modern Historicity

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Keywords: historicity – heritagization – historic monuments – representation of the past – legitimizing practices.

Abstract:
Starting with the concept of „historicity” understood as a way of conceiving the past via different social practices [Hirsh and Stewart 2005] the author reflects on her long term ethnographic research at two prominent “monuments of Polish history and culture”, namely royal castles in Warsaw and Cracow. After the Hirsh and Stewart’s insight that academic history is one of modern historicities, the article proposes taking “history” and “heritage” (understood by David Lowenthal [1998] as two co–existing sets of past–oriented practices) for two modes of modern historicity, arguing also that in some extend they correspond to different modes of representation of the past in modernity as described by Bann [1984]. Pointing at the late modern crisis of representation the author follows the politics of representation of the past, focusing on historic monuments. It is suggested that their status is legitimized on two levels of power relations. The position of subsequent political systems and governments, and the resulting material and institutional solutions are the macro–scale level, while the micro–scale political involvement of a historic monument comes out of the expert discourses and practices. It is the micro–scale level of power relations that ascribes historic value to objects and heritagizes them. Ethnographic research of historic monuments should therefore recognize the modes of historicity involved and describe their selective character and legitimizing practices, opening up further analysis of power relationships involved.

About Author:
KLEKOT EWA – anthropologist of culture, translator, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. Contact email: evakot[at]poczta.onet.pl

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