Heritage as boundary object: the troubling potential of the Secretariat in Yangon, Myanmar

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Yangon, Myanmar, urban heritage has been deployed to mean material objects capable of both recalling history and producing a better future. This article examines the ‘heritagisation’ of the Secretariat during the so-called ‘transition’, even as ‘transition’ and ‘heritagisation’ were intertwined ideas and discursive tactics that capitalised on the temporary retreat of military autocracy. We use the term ‘heritagisation’ to indicate a process wherein something comes to be quite commonsensically considered as ‘heritage’ and in which actors and stakeholders disavow being the driving force behind this process. Heritagisation, for us, differs from heritage-making in that the former excludes accountability. It is predicated on the eventual heritage status of a place, object or practice appearing as obvious, naturally emergent, and seemingly indisputable rather than constructed by invested actors. This process of claiming significance effectively turned heritage into a ‘boundary object’ that enabled Myanmar’s cultural elites and international stakeholders to not only reframe colonial architecture as ‘heritage’ but also imagine an alternative future wherein the actions of coercive governments – both British colonial and Myanmar military – could be reconciled with the idea of a new democratic nation, made visible by a revitalised colonial cityscape.