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- Convenor:
-
Charles La Shure
(Seoul National University)
- Location:
- A102
Short Abstract:
National identities are often forged in the crucible of competing interpretations of utopia, reality, and/or heritage. This panel will examine the various ways in which the tension and interplay between such conflicting ideas shapes how people identify themselves as (imagined) communities.
Long Abstract:
In any community, the creation of a communal identity invariably means conflict between the members of that community. These conflicts can be very pronounced when we reach the scale of nations; defined by Benedict Anderson as “imagined” communities, in the sense that it is impossible for each member to know every other member, nations are particularly susceptible to broad rifts in ideas and interpretations.
The concepts of heritage and utopia are particularly useful building blocks in the construction of national identity, and the conflicting interpretations and applications of heritage and utopia play an important role in determining what shape this national identity may eventually take. The nature of these conflicts may be temporal, such as competing visions of an idealized past or future set against the fluid reality of the present; spatial, such as opposing conceptions of a given space and to whom that space belongs; or ideological, such as philosophies or worldviews competing for the hearts and minds of the community.
While these interpretations may often be presented as literally opposing, such a binary view is merely a conceptual simplification of a complex reality in which everything may not fit neatly into one of two pigeonholes. Thus, in seeking to understand how conflicting interpretations of utopia, reality, and heritage shape national identity, this panel offers a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of these various threads and how they are woven together.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Goran Janev (Sts Cyril and Methodius University Skopje)
Paper short abstract:
The ongoing construction of ethnocratic spatial order forces citizens of Skopje to forget values of diversity. Instead they turn to revitalize a heritage site that still cherishes old habits of negotiating diversity and long established customs of interethnic communication.
Paper long abstract:
The recent state sponsored onslaught on the public space called project Skopje 2014 aims at establishing ethnocratic spatial order to correspond with the rising ethnocracy in Macedonia. Instalment of countless monuments and dozen of new buildings and remaking of existing facades into historicist eclectic style turns the whole city into a museum that glorifies Macedonian nation as birthplace of European civilization. This pretentious goal rips the Macedonian society along ethnic lines. At the historical fault-line in the city, the nucleus of the old Skopje, and the new developments south of it, where the most of the project Skopje 2014 is located, a sudden renewal of almost forgotten shared public space signals resistance to the divisive tendencies. Citizens of Skopje turn to the intangible heritage of negotiating diversity as most recognizable characteristic of the Skopje Old Bazaar and flock to this ethnically diverse area against the top-down division of the city in two symbolically separated ethnic parts. The intangible heritage of daily inter-ethnic communication is a strong reminder of centuries of cohabitation and specific forms of civility arising from it. The Skopje Old Bazaar is one of the largest Ottoman bazaars still preserved in the Balkans but it has a heritage of regulating diversity that still preserves civil values above ethnic and/or religious belonging. Forced to forget their shared past and valued diversity citizens of Skopje revisit the place that enlivens their memories and hopes for the future.
Skaidrė Urbonienė (Lithuanian Culture Research Institute)
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on the cross-crafting heritage of the Soviet era and shows how people through certain symbolic motifs expressed their national and religious identity. Cross-crafting as a living tradition testified that the Soviet regime's utopia for an atheistic society was a "fallen utopia".
Paper long abstract:
Soviet occupation was an extremely unfavourable period for religious life: atheist ideology was strongly inculcated, and people were prevented from conducting religious ceremonies. Visual signs of religious faith were also destroyed. Many churches were closed and turned into secular institutions. Small sacral monuments, especially crosses, standing in public spaces, beside roads and in town squares, were ruthlessly demolished, and it was prohibited to build new ones. Despite these obstacles people used to build crosses and other sacral monuments during the Soviet period.
In this paper it will be discussed the peculiarities of the cross-crafting heritage of the Soviet era. The intentions of cross building and decorative elements characteristic of the Soviet period will be highlighted. It will be revealed how people through certain symbolic and decorative motifs expressed their patriotic sentiments, hope for an independent state, as well as religious and national identity. Moreover, in the Soviet era the making and erection of a sacral monument by itself was an act of resistance against the anti-religious policy, which sometimes had a patriotic undertone - the remembrance or ambition of Lithuania's independence.
In other words, during the Soviet era people through the maintenance of cross-crafting tradition have expressed their religious and national identity as well as their hope for independence. The Soviet authorities, suppressing religious life, destroying sacral monuments, strived to embody their ideological utopia of the atheistic community. However, cross-crafting as a living tradition testified that this utopia was a "fallen utopia".
Charles La Shure (Seoul National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the role that restoration of cultural heritage plays in the construction of South Korea's modern national identity. This restoration seeks to bring the past into the present, fostering the creation of a new heritage, or a new perception of heritage as part of a modern utopia.
Paper long abstract:
Since its inception in 1948, South Korea has sought to construct a modern national identity. Cultural heritage has played a large part in this, and Seoul, home to tangible cultural heritage dating back to the 14th century, is a showcase for these efforts.
However, Japanese attempts to impose their own vision of Korean heritage on Korea—not to mention a bitter civil war—left little of this heritage unscathed. The walls around Seungnyemun Gate were demolished by the Japanese in the name of urban development, and the gate itself was heavily damaged during the Korean War; most recently, the wooden superstructure was destroyed by arson in 2008. Many of the buildings in the royal palace of Gyeongbokgung were dismantled by the Japanese, and the restoration project continues to this day. These efforts are informed in large part by the desire to erase traces of the heritage imposed upon Korea by the Japanese colonizers, thus returning the heritage to its true, original state.
Other areas of conflict include the necessary compromise between heritage and the reality of the modern metropolis. The changing needs of South Korea as a people and a nation have meant that restoration is less about returning to the past and more about bringing the past into the present, creating a new—or at least new perception of—heritage as part of a modern utopia. These issues will be addressed through an examination of how South Korea approaches the restoration of tangible cultural heritage in Seoul.
Tsafi Sebba-Elran (Haifa University)
Paper short abstract:
The popularity of Jewish anthologies at the beginning of the 20th century along with the rise of Zionist utopias point to their common role in the configuration of the imagined national future of Israel.The presentation will examine the main roles of the anthology in light of the contemporary utopia
Paper long abstract:
The manifest popularity of Jewish anthologies of various Jewish traditions at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, along with the rise of Zionist utopias, suggest their common role in the configuration of the imagined national future of Israel.
The presentation will be dedicated to the main roles and characteristics of the Jewish anthology in light of the contemporary utopia. Particularly, their shared ideological goals, their common use of space images, their detached and fragmented representations of the past and their symbolic discourse as well as their comprehensive and closed nature, their influence on literary canons and affinity to modern preservation forms as the encyclopedia and the national archive. The differences between the two genres of the anthology and the utopia will be discussed as well, while focusing on the immanent tensions of the anthology as a collection of different traditions and its pluralistic nature, and on the unique place of the compiler as a medium for transmitting memories.
The main questions which will be raised on this background will be: what were the common heritage representations on which national Jewish anthologies of the time were based on? And, what were the representations they rejected? How did their editing influence Jewish thinking patterns? And what were the main tensions they preserved and how?
Justyna Szymanska (University of Warsaw)
Paper short abstract:
The ongoing political crisis in Ukraine has been a trigger for re-thinking the question of identity of citizens of its Eastern regions - an appearance inspired mostly by differences in approach towards issues such as history, memory, strategies of memorialisation and communist past.
Paper long abstract:
In my PhD study I focus on a dynamic of the process of generating visions of the 'new' Ukrainian state, occurring in the context of political crisis. During my presentation I would like to concentrate on the interpretations of fantasies (Navaro-Yashin 2002) and common-sense concepts of a future of the state emerging in a territory commonly defined as 'eastern Ukraine'. A belief in the alleged 'split of Ukraine' (West-East) has had a great impact on concepts of state development through the decades - but has also influenced narratives of citizens, their perception and categorisation grid. Theory of two different socio-political cultures within one independent state: a democratic West and 'soviet-oriented' East has often been an excuse for creating lines between regions, where one part is said to have strong Ukrainian identity and be a driving force of pro-democratic shifts while the other is characterised by a 'Creole nationalism' (Riabchuk 2004) - with its disdain or even hostile approach to Ukrainian language and culture - or is even believed not to have formed national identity at all, thinking instead in regional or social-roles terms (Hrycak, Chruślińska 2009). In effect inhabitants of eastern Ukraine are often in priori defined as deprived of a sense of Ukrainian, but also Russian identity - being somewhat 'no state's men'. I would like to examine this concept, referring to a figure of homo sovieticus, as it crop up recently in Ukrainian media but also in Western-Ukrainian academic narratives, in a context of ongoing crisis.
Svetlana Ryzhakova (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
The paper deals with idea and practice of Indian classical dance in various styles as most important cultural heritage, national and regional brand. Conceptions of “Indian Antiquity”, “past glory” and “museum of dance” will be discussed on broad social profile of ethnographic field of dance in India today.
Paper long abstract:
In vast diversity of Indian dance traditions today there are styles with strong "personalities": highly codified gestures, body movements, costumes, make-up and compositions. They belong to the so called "classical dances" (Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Manipuri, Odissi etc), which idea emerged in 1930-40s and was aimed to up-lift the social and cultural status of dance and dancers. Both Indian and foreign performers and philosophers (Tedh Shown, Menaka, Rukmini Devi, I.Rahman, A.Coomaraswamy, M.Khokar, A.M. Raj, M. Sarabhai) shaped the images of "Indian classical dance" and distinct regional styles. In short time period (1920-1950s) the ideas of "Indian Antiquity" and "past glory" came into being, and changed the profile of ethnographic field of dance in India. Classical dance in India, as well as in Europe, happened to be a certain kind of reflection the past - it's utopian image, vision and re-construction. But the idea of "classicism" in dance and idea of modernism ("contemporarity") emerged and developed simultaneously in case of India. While certain segments of dance practice in each tradition were codified and even frozen, creating peculiar "museums of dance", cultural heritage, other parts developed and are under perpetual transformation. The debate of "classicism" is still central to dance discourses in India today, partly due to cultural outlook of cultural politics of the country. One of the reasons is the need for state and regional representation: the dance styles serves as symbols of "Indianness" and are installed into educational scholarship. However it sometimes contradicts with endeavor and strategies of artistic groups and dancing communities.
Elisabeth Euvrard (IDEMEC)
Paper short abstract:
Many communities have engaged in the development of their traditions since the UNESCO Convention. The heritagisation of the morra game in Sardinia sways between valorisation of local culture and separatist issues, characterizing by confluences and conflicts this instrumentalisation of traditions.
Paper long abstract:
Since the UNESCO Convention that established the intangible cultural heritage as a new category of heritage was signed in 2003, many territorial collectivities and communities of all kinds have engaged in the development of their traditions. This process of (re)discovery of one's own cultural property navigates between different paradigms, such as local development and identity claims. If the first believes in its heritage's strong potential to strengthen the tourist attractiveness of areas particularly hardly hit by the economic crisis, the second fits in the present European context, where regional cultures find expression more and more.
In Sardinia, the second island of the Mediterranean in size after Sicily, traditional sport games entered slowly the broad international process of heritagisation, reinforced by the 2003 Convention but already promoted by the World Heritage Convention in 1972.
These traditional games constitute today a new resource, both identitary and economic, since local actors assimilate them and turn them into different projects, whose nature varies according to the objectives set.
The mutations that affect morra in Sardinia today illustrate the ambiguities of the heritagisation of the most practised traditional game of the island. Field surveys indeed reveal a strong independentist issue among the organizers of the main tournaments, who however support their request for financial support with touristic considerations.
Aleksandra Paprot (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan)
Paper short abstract:
Post-migrative communities of polish Western and Northern Lands still have problem with creation of their identity. However, many of cultural institution and NGO's try to establish new regional and local traditions which extract from heritage based on pre- and postwar memory of cultural landscape.
Paper long abstract:
Polish Western and Northern Lands include regions which socio-cultural structure has been marked by the history of resettlements of Polish and Ukrainian people and German expulsions after 1945. The exchange of population had significant impact on the deconstruction of cultural continuity. Regional heritage has been forgotten over the years. However, the next generation of new inhabitants of Polish "Recovered Territories" began the process of restoring local heritage. It shows that local community activities are an important region-creating factor, constituting a coherent image of a region or a "little homeland" based on multicultural heritage.
The multiculturalism demands specific strategies, development and promotion directions from cultural institutions. Local community and NGO's, apart from being subject to some external influences of institutions also undertake activities for the cultural heritage. These initiatives are related to Rappaport's concept of social ecosystem and aim mainly at: 1) strengthening group bonds and building a community, based on specific characteristics, such as cultural heritage (cultural resources of a local territory); 2) implementing necessary changes and improving the quality of life (economic resources of a local territory); 3) protecting and taking care of natural environment (natural resources of a local territory).
The presentation aims to show selected examples of cultural heritage promotion in post-migrative communities. The analysis will be taken in relation to the glocality theory of modern society.
*Project "Creating Regional and Local Identity in Western and Northern Lands (with Special Consideration Given to Żuławy and Powiśle)" is funded by National Science Center in Poland.