Recent anthropological studies of cultural heritage have moved beyond enduring binary approaches (e.g. heritage vs. history, memory vs. counter-memory, or global vs. local) by highlighting the performativity, inventiveness and multiplicity of heritage processes. Yet one-party states like Cuba present cases where the analysis of multiplicity is not as straightforward as suggested by these studies. This is due to the disciplinary nature of the state-directed and tourism-oriented, heritage-making projects that blind us to other types of heritage practices. In such contexts, applying a topographical inquiry championed by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière to analyses of heritage can recuperate multiplicity by leveling the position of the analyst and unearthing instances of “dissensus,” which disrupt the normative ways in which people and things can appear, behave, and be perceived. In the case of UNESCO-denominated urban historic centers in late socialist Cuba, a Rancièrian approach reveals the multiple and dynamic processes of heritage co-creation.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/matthew_j_hill/3/