Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the tension between the responsibility to care for the past and the power relations that drive heritage politics in Sri Lanka. In order to critically examine its seductive potential or ‘magic’, the paper discusses the alignment of heritage with identity formations in the present.

Paper long abstract:

In Sri Lanka as elsewhere, discussions surrounding the ethics of heritage tap into global discourses on safeguarding endangered heritage. After the end of the civil war in 2009, heritage became moreover linked with reconciliation. Yet at the same time sites, artefacts and practices to be preserved and sponsored by the government are often inscribed as Sinhalese-Buddhist, thereby marginalizing and overwriting the heritage of minorities. By appealing to nationalist sentiments, the past conjured in this process of fusing identity and heritage frequently serves political purposes in the present.

In this paper, I will analyze the entanglement of heritage with nationalism and the resulting tension between the responsibility to care for a certain past and the power relations that drive post-war heritage politics in Sri Lanka. In order to critically examine the ‘magic of heritage’ – its seductive potential to enchant and naturalize a particular idea of nationhood and identity – this paper will center on the question of how a certain practice, artefact or site, imbued with notions of antiquity and tradition, becomes aligned with an identity formation in the present. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, I will discuss this question by focusing on the example of dance.