Heritage as Transmission

Abstract

<p>This paper explores how exclusionary practices resulting from mainstream heritage preservation approaches, policies, and practice can be countered through an analysis of the construction of meaning and its presentation. It is argued that heritage meaning is socially constructed, complex, and multi-faceted. In the process of revealing, decoding, and construing meaning, an ecosystemic approach can reveal an ecology of human culture within which a vessel of meaning resides, together with the multiplicity of meanings inherent to the structural relationships within such an ecology.</p><p>Within the above framework, vessels of meaning are given a function as mnemonic agents that are preserved to retain their potency for a continuously evolving process of re-discovery, decoding, and adding layers to existing constructed meaning. A practice of inclusion is proposed as a subversive strategy to oppose the use of heritage to create divisions and conflict through opening avenues for understanding a multiplicity of meanings. The author describes how current laws and policies of heritage preservation, interpretation, and presentation of vessels of value may be reviewed to be geared towards achieving heritage topographies that are open-ended transmitters of meaning, knowledge, emotion, and experience for the benefit of a multiplex society, with inclusiveness as the dominant narrative. The proposed heritage interpretation process includes open-ended mapping, exposure, and multi-vocal telling of what Dolff-Bonekämper (2011) defines as "memorable moments," in order to reveal traces of events as a topography of memory that may be rediscovered in many ways over time, and from a multiplicity of cultural and sub-cultural perspectives.</p>