Into the Contact Zones of Heritage Making: local realities, transnational themes and internationalist expectations

Into the Contact Zones of Heritage Making: local realities, transnational themes and internationalist expectationsProf. Dr. Jasper Chalcraft 
European University Institute, Florença, Itália
Pesquisador visitante FAPESP 2019/09397-7
Debatedor: Prof. Dr. João Felipe Gonçalves (Dep. de Antropologia - USP)

Abstract: 
This presentation explores the contradictions between local realities and the international expectations of heritage as a kind of culture-making. At the ‘local’ level, I describe two different kinds of grassroots heritage-making that deal with the transnational theme of ‘difficult heritage’ (e.g. memories of totalitarianism, and trans-Atlantic slavery), relating ongoing work with the Heritage Contact Zone project in Europe, with the collaborative production of an ethnographic film with the São Paulo-based Congolese artist Shambuyi Wetu and the ‘difficult heritage’ inside the Museo Afro-Brasil. Such collaborative approaches complicate idealised uses of heritage promoted at the institutional level, and resituate heritage-making outside of policy papers and management strategies.

In contrast to civil-society actors and artivists using heritage to explore the potential for social inclusion through culture, international institutions and initiatives continue to promote heritage as a tool for economic and social development. The presentation tests the rhetoric and promises made of heritage as a factor in improving social cohesion against these more ground-up strategies: it asks, can heritage as a ‘contact zone’ enmeshed in transnational themes contribute to greater social inclusion for minorities and minority heritages in both Europe and Brazil?

(a palestra será ministrada em inglês)

Dia: 09/10/2019

Local: sala 101, prédio da Filosofia e Ciências Sociais - FFLCH / USP (Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315)

Horário: 18h15 as 19h30