Difficult Heritage Research Articles

Re-emerging memories: humanitarianism and sovereignty in the Târgu Jiu Camp

This article briefly charts the debates surrounding the afterlife of a heritage space of political violence, the Târgu Jiu camp in Western Romania, and locates the ensuing narratives in the current contestations of the liberal democratic consensus in Central and Eastern Europe. The camp was an important Holocaust site and an equally relevant space for the early communist movement. Contrary to similar sites where competing interpretations of these histories are at play, this camp has been largely absent from debates on public memory of past political violence nationally. The significance of this space for local political history has been silenced. This article concerns itself with the long dynamic of silencing difficult heritage, its causes and implications and the selective perspectives on certain histories it entails. Târgu Jiu is a microcosm of this entanglement. Emerging in Romanian media and public debate at the time of the 2014 “refugee” reception crisis, this newly retrieved collecting memory of the camp capitalized on a history of past internal European displacement, Romanian victimhood and a sense of persecuted national sovereignty. Silencing made room for newer selective histories of this heritage space. Specifically, the complex history of the camp was appropriated into a type of politics of memory that reconfigures narratives about “liberal” values in the region. This article discusses the processes through which liberal, “European” values are appropriated and instrumentalized for the very opposite principles.

The Work of Acknowledgment: ‘Loud Fence’ as Community-Level Response to Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Testimony

Since the 1980s, the global dimensions of institutional child sexual abuse have become increasingly apparent. In some countries this has had a profound impact locally. In Australia, one such place has been the storied town of Ballarat. Throughout Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Ballarat became a significant focus of the Inquiry. As local abuse became clearer, colourful ribbons began appearing at sites throughout the town. This article investigates the meaning of such a response, and its role in relation to survivor testimony. Transforming into a movement that persists to this day, the effect is to reconsolidate a community's ‘difficult heritage’ of institutional abuse into a more celebrated story of rebellion and protest. The originality of the article stems from the contribution it makes to understanding community-level responses to institutional abuse, and the role of ritual in the formation of collective memory.

Learning about conflict: the role of community museums in educating on difficult heritage in a divided society

ABSTRACT Community museums can be contested sites for learning as they often communicate clear, subjective narratives that challenge mainstream ideas of the past by introducing knowledge that they know to be uncomfortable, rather than displaying multiple perspectives on a violent past. For that reason, educators of history in a divided society may be cautious to expose their students to such information, as their school curricula aim to create both greater social cohesion and criticality in their students that the emotion-laden museum environment could distort. This paper scrutinises the role that two community museums, each located in one of Northern Ireland’s two major identity traditions, play in educating on difficult heritage and, particularly, how conscious each is of developing young people’s critical thinking. Thereby, the underlying values and observed approach to emotions of museums are considered, alongside staff cooperation with teachers, to find out which concept of learning, if any, the museums follow. Key findings reflect a passionate but restricted view of education which lacks a defined concept of what education should be, and how exactly people learn.

Sealed Off Heritage: Navigating Hitler's Bunker in Postwar Berlin

Scholarly debates about the ‘difficult heritage’ associated with National Socialism typically rest with the preservation, memorialization or eradication of the visible remains of the Third Reich. Heritage, though, is more than a tangible place or object. It is also a process of social and cultural engagement where acts of remembrance (or concealment) reflect contemporary politics and social values. The tension between a distinct sense of historical place and the present-day reality of a voided landscape is illustrated keenly through a case study of Adolf Hitler's Berlin Führerbunker. Despite being physically absent from today's cityscape, Hitler's bunker has long generated both concern about the potential for becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site, and curiosity among international tourists, keen to see where the Nazi dictator met his end. Tracing tourist activity since 1945, and exploring recurring efforts to contain, destroy or expose the site, this article posits that the Führerbunker has become an effective countermemorial, its very absence from the contemporary cityscape sparking public discussions among visitors and fostering a critical, grassroots reflection upon the challenges of handling legacies of dictatorship.

Exiling Karl Marx from Karl Marx Square: The Political Lives of a Leipzig Monument before and after 1989

Across the world, the ‘difficult heritage’ of discredited monuments has prompted pitched disputation. This article explores the fraught origins and fate of Leipzig's Karl Marx monument. From its unveiling in 1974, it was one of the East Bloc's most controversial landmarks, as it stood on the site of an intact Gothic church dynamited in May 1968 in the face of East Germany's largest mass protest between the 1953 Uprising and 1989 Revolution. Enthroned on Leipzig's central Karl Marx Square as an ideological triumph, the post-communist expulsion of Marx to a remote courtyard evolved out of a selective, contingent process, wherein asymmetrical power relations culminated in ‘events’ when the monument acquired an ideological charge. From a myriad of potential destinies, the decision to exile (rather than retain or destroy) Marx's effigy can only be deciphered by unpacking the layered symbolic messages players ascribed to the evolving aesthetics at its initial location before and after 1989. Informing disputes about landmarks from Ukraine to the American South, the rise and fall of Leipzig's Marx monument exemplifies how and why a metal object can become a lightning rod for controversy, as well as how its re-exhibition can facilitate discussions about trauma, guilt, and redemption.

Debating structural violence in European heritage diplomacy

ABSTRACT The article focuses on difficult heritage associated with three forms of structural violence in European history – the Communist and Nazi regimes and the former European colonies. We scrutinize how these three sources of difficult heritage are used in heritage diplomacy in the EU’s flagship heritage action, the European Heritage Label (EHL). On the one hand we analyse ‘diplomacy’ as principles and practices aimed at creating and maintaining peaceful and working relationships between actors both within and beyond the EU. On the other hand, we build on the related adjective ‘diplomatic’ as a tactful, delicate, and sensitive way of maintaining human relations. Our empirical data consists of interviews conducted at three EHL sites (Historic Gdańsk Shipyard (Poland), Camp Westerbork (the Netherlands) and Sagres Promontory (Portugal). We argue that unlike in the heritage of Communist and Nazi regimes, the potential for societal heritage diplomacy remains largely unrealized for colonial regimes.

The difficult heritage of Sandby borg – exploring memories, ideas and narratives of a 1500 year old massacre

The difficult heritage of Sandby borg – exploring memories, ideas and narratives of a 1500 year old massacre

Difficult heritage on social network sites: An integrative review

Social network sites (SNS) have recently become an active ground for interactions on contested and dissonant heritage, on the heritage of excluded and subaltern groups, and on the heritage of collective traumatic past events. Situated at the intersection between heritage studies, memory studies, Holocaust studies, social media studies and digital heritage studies, a growing body of scholarly literature has been emerging in the past 10 years, addressing online communication practices on SNS. This study, an integrative review of a comprehensive corpus of 80 scholarly works about difficult heritage on SNS, identifies the profile of authors contributing to this emerging area of research, the increasing frequency of publication after 2017, the prevalence of qualitative research methods, the global geographic dispersion of heritage addressed, and the emergence of common themes and concepts derived mostly from the authors ‘home’ fields of memory studies, heritage studies and (digital) media studies.

Atlas of Dark Destinations—Explore the World of Dark Tourism by Peter Hohenhaus

Dark tourism is an appellation defining travel to a diverse array of tourist sites that portray death, disasters, or calamities. For over 25 years, dark tourism as an international subject of scholarly interest has drawn together multidisciplinary discourse, where the dominion of the dead collides with contemporary touristic consumption. In turn, dark tourism has opened scholarly scrutiny of our significant Other dead and how societies deal with difficult heritage. Consequently, dark tourism is about polysemic touristic encounters with our memorialized dead, where a fine line exists between commemoration and commercialism. Dark tourism is inherently political and dissonant, as (re)presentations of our dead are imbued with sociopolitical bias and where remembrance is politically engineered and hegemonically orchestrated. Whereas heritage may produce narratives for dark tourism, it is the tourist experience that consumes such messages and co-constructs meaning making. Indeed, dark tourism displays our fights, follies, failures, and misfortunes, and subsequent tourist experiences of our ‘heritage that hurts’ mediates a sense of mortality at places of fatality.

Undrowned Story: The Landscape on the Volgo–Baltic Waterway as the Volga Hydropower Cascade Submersions Memorial

Vast territories along the Volga River basin were intentionally submerged in the 1930s to 1980s for the sake of creating the Volga hydropower cascade. Many people suffered displacement, and hundreds of cultural and historical sites were destroyed or left under water. However, these events were never recognized as a national tragedy in the official public narrative. This article is dedicated to a grassroots project aimed at creating a ‘lieu de mémoire’ for this difficult heritage by preserving the ruins of a submerged church. The ruins marking the transformed landscape bear memories of the events that accompanied that transformation as well as the role of an individual and local community in commemorating the traumatic events. Intentionally preserved ruins are extremely rare for Russia, yet they powerfully link tangible and intangible heritage and give voice to repressed narratives.

Destruction, heritage and memory: post-conflict memorialisation for recovery and reconciliation

PurposeThe destruction of armed confrontations – ranging from chronic armed conflicts to full-scale wars – leads to enormous loss of human lives and causes wide-scale devastation. They also leave deep and lasting traumas in the minds of those whose lives are torn apart because of a conflict. Memorialisation of conflict-affected sites plays an invaluable part in post-trauma recovery and can contribute to the reconciliation of different groups involved in a conflict as these sites are representatives of communities' collective memory, identity and a source of unity and resilience. This paper aims to investigate post-trauma recovery and reconciliation processes through the phenomena of memorialisation. It aims to answer how and if the memorialisation of sites of pain can contribute to the recovery and reconciliation of affected communities and serve as examples for other people around the world.Design/methodology/approachThe documentation of such processes and the lessons learnt can offer valuable information for conducting similar exercises in other settings ravaged by a conflict. To achieve this, a review of literature on trauma, memory, memorialisation and difficult heritage was conducted, while the memorialisation processes from different cases such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1939–1945), Beirut (1975–1990) and Sarajevo's Vijecnica and Mostar Bridge (1992–1995) were analysed.FindingsIt was identified that the potential of memorialisation for post-trauma recovery and reconciliation is vast. However, if these processes can “heal” or “hurt” depend largely on who the stakeholders are; how the site and events are interpreted and presented; how pre/post-conflict relationships and dynamics are harnessed; how symbolic meanings (old and new) are [re]interpreted; the spatial-temporal nature of the site and those interacting with it; and the intended and perceived messages. Altogether, memorialisation of conflict-affected sites is a political and continuous process that should take into consideration all those directly and indirectly involved, the dynamics between them and all the symbolic meanings acquired and attributed to the site.Originality/valueThe study critically explores frameworks of memorialisation and their impact on both the built environment and communities. It contributes to the wider discussion of difficult heritage memorialisation and approaches to reflect on sites and cities emerging from crises such as conflict.

Complicating difficult heritage and the politics of institutionalized memory in post-Accord Colombia

ABSTRACT The Colombian peace process with the insurgent group FARC-EP has been characterized by a lack of compliance and the politicization of peace and memory including the work of sites of memory and peace. Through complicating the European-focused concept of difficult heritage, this article presents the interventions of three museum curators and/or directors of the country’s key centralized memory and peace institutions: the Memory House Museum in Medellin, the Memory Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá and the National Centre for Historical Memory in Bogotá. Based on interviews undertaken between late 2019 and early 2020, this article reveals how those in charge of these institutions negotiate the lines between the politicization of memory and the ‘alive memories’ of civil society, due to the ongoing conflict. Bringing together key debates on difficult heritage and Latin American memory studies, this article seeks to contribute to Southern understandings of critical heritage and museum studies.

Introduction

Introduction

“Creative” Microhistories, Difficult Heritage, And “Dark” Public History: The Islandmagee Witches (1711) Project

ABSTRACT This article charts a decade-long project on the trial of the Islandmagee witches in County Antrim (Northern Ireland) in 1711. The project comprised three overlapping and connected phases that negotiated a pathway between researching the history of the trial, its interpretative representation in public discourse, and finding impactful ways to bring this research to wider audiences. It demonstrates that creatively and carefully pitched, microhistories of specific trials can fruitfully add to key historiographical debates in witchcraft studies but when combined with sustained, targeted dissemination and co-produced and collaborative public history, it can open up hidden, but important parts of cultural history and dark heritage to wider audiences. This is especially important in countries such as Northern Ireland that have largely overlooked their witch hunting past and where public remembrance and commemoration of witch trials can be difficult and provoke controversy.

Трудное наследие в работах зарубежных исследователей: сущность и трактовки

The article is devoted to approaches to the study of difficult heritage and its interpretation in the studies of foreign authors. The dynamic of comprehension of the difficult heritage is demonstrated by highlighting three influential works that have formed certain trajectories of the consideration of difficult heritage in scientific literature. It is noted that the monograph by J. E. Tunbridge and G. J. Ashworth placed difficult heritage in the discourse of heritage management and tourism. The work of S. Macdonald sets the direction for the study of material heritage and architectural structures as a difficult heritage. The study of V. Logan and C. Reeves contributed to the development of cross-cultural cultural and interdisciplinary studies of the difficult heritage.

Report from the Webinar “Difficult Heritage: the Interwar Codification Movement in Central and Eastern Europe (1918–1939)” – 7 October 2021

Report from the Webinar “Difficult Heritage: the Interwar Codification Movement in Central and Eastern Europe (1918–1939)” – 7 October 2021

Bolzano: miasto dwóch narodów, dwóch dyktatur i wspólnego, trudnego dziedzictwa

Bolzano: A City of Two Nations, Two Dictatorships and a Common, Difficult Heritage This paper analyses the case of Bolzano as a border city situated between Italy and Austria that had to deal with the unresolved issue of “difficult history” and “difficult heritage” after World War II. A particular emphasis is placed on the fascist Victory Monument as a symbol of the antagonism between the Italian and German-speaking population of the city, and the exhibition “BZ ‘18-’45: One Monument, One City, Two Dictatorships” as an example of dealing with “difficult heritage”.

Lizbona afrykańska

African Lisbon. Difficult Heritage, Postcolonial Relations, and Crosscultural Challenges The aim of this article is to synthetically capture African cultural influences from former colonies and various manifestations of the „African presence” in today’s Lisbon. This „African presence”, in a broad sense, includes a number of phenomena such as the living conditions and customs of the African diaspora in Lisbon, African elements in the cultural and tourist offer of the city, the activities of afrodescendentes (people of African origin) in the area of postcolonial relations, African traces in the topography of the city, and others. African cultural heritage is presented as dissonant, ambivalent, subject to various interpretations, also through the practices of post-memory. To illustrate these issues, I refer to a few examples of artistic projects and initiatives dealing with the topic of postcolonial relations in the Portuguese context.

Kłopotliwe dziedzictwo Predappio.

Contested Heritage of Predappio. Conflicting Memories and Construction of the European City Narrative This paper is devoted to the problem of Predappio as a place of contested memory. Benito Mussolini’s hometown is presented in literature as a symbolic site of the divided memory of the fascist regime. In what follows, I will examine the process of shaping the image of Predappio from the fascist period to the present day, as well as strategies implemented by local authorities to overcome the legacy of this difficult heritage and build a positive narrative of the city.

Hot interpretations of difficult heritage: the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre in China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of national heritage through the interpretation of sites and events, with a particular focus on hot interpretation at difficult heritage sites. Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines the processes of difficult heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre over the past 30 years, and examines the resulting political implications.FindingsAligning with contemporary national social and political agendas, heritage interpretation at the Memorial Hall actively serves as an authorised educational tool. Despite the hot interpretation techniques used to stimulate the emotional impact of visitor experiences, this particular traumatic past has been utilised in nation building practices that legitimise specific histories and form a national image on an international stage.Research limitations/implicationsHeritage interpretation of difficult history will benefit from open dialogue and assessment of the past from multiple perspectives. This requires all stakeholders to work together to develop interpretation strategies that acknowledge and prioritise the needs of post-conflict societies. Without this form of open dialogue and reflection, the official claims of heritage interpretation achieving reconciliation between conflicted peoples remain superficial. Originality/valueThis study offers a novel contribution to the discussion of heritage interpretation. The results shed light on the cultural processes surrounding state interpretation of traumatic pasts for specific political uses. The study suggests ways in which heritage sectors and authorities can achieve social goals, such as public education, reconciliation and peacebuilding, through such processes of heritage interpretation.