engleski

The Darker Matter: Uses of Heritage between Public Rights and Moral Responsibilities

Presentation focuses on perception and use of cultural heritage from the point of view of identity building in post-Communist Europe. Historians, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists, political scientists, economists and anthropologists have already studied processes of emancipation and liberation in social revolutions that led to democratic reprisals towards the collapsed political and cultural systems. Perceptions that produced these narratives (or narratives that produced these perceptions) brought new series of physical interventions on the so-called built heritage. Traumatic events of the past century were oftentimes “refined” to fit new political and social tasks. On many occasions, to paraphrase David Lowenthal, the past ceased to be a foreign country and became a tool of reshaping the political present. In this era of emancipations and claiming of democratic rights, public perception and narration of the experiences of the past frequently outmatched the role of material testimonies. I will therefore discuss the relations between these testimonies and their perception from historical and theoretical points of view, studying the ethical aspects of inherited artistic matter in relation to overwhelming role of social perceptions in the transforming Europe.

matter, conservation, war, destruction

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