Reflection, Selection, Deflection: Rhetoric in the Global Pursuit of Heritage
My Session Status
The rhetorician Kenneth Burke has coined the trifecta of “reflection, selection, and deflection” as terministic screens that govern our words (1969:59). These three processes are equally active in the dynamics of heritage: out of the boundless reservoir of an imaginable past, certain items are selected to be reflections (or: representations) of a bounded identity, but are at the same time deflections from other historical items that are not made to matter (or: made not to matter) in given heritage discourses. Thus, “reflection, selection, deflection” are the guiding notions for the discussions in this session as they embody the intentionality, the creativity, and the strategy that drive heritage efforts, and point to the critical role of power.
Increasingly, this relation between heritage and rhetoric is addressed by academic work (Lafrenz Samuels and Rico forthc.), and a broad “discursive turn” has been diagnosed (Harrison 2013:95-113, see esp. Smith 2006). Still, there has been no systematic attempt to articulate the position that rhetoric is not just a contingent aspect of heritage, but that there is no pursuit of heritage without persuasive and figurative interaction. There is no authenticity that has not come about through persuasive processes of authentication. What, then, is the role of rhetoric in the performance of the fundamental practices of heritage—categorizing, curating, conserving, and communicating (Harrison)?
Papers are invited on any arena in which reflection, selection and deflection take place, such as heritage tourism, public debates or political agendas. Further fitting topics include the role of metaphors and other tropes, persuasive genres such as certification and authentication practices, and specific idioms of heritage such as AHD.
Sub Sessions
This paper will examine the value and function of references to heritage within political, media, and public discourse in contemporary Britain and the United States as an indication of the relationship with the prehistoric, ancient, medieval, and recent past. Although we speak in reverential terms of history and heritage, of the significance of preservation, the duty of curating and the importance of commemoration, the manner in which the past is brought to bear on the present through disc...
While “heritage and modernity” has deservedly received considerable critical attention, we have been struck by the fact that this has not been the case with regards to Modernism. Considering the vast influence the various strands of Modernism have had on cultural productions and intellectual life across the globe (architecture, visual arts, literature, music, theatre, philosophy, and so on) this is perhaps surprising. The reflection consists of two parts: 1) A schematic characteriz...
The discursive turn in the field of heritage studies has made a major contribution to our understanding of heritage as a set of processual practices and co-constructed meanings, demonstrating not only the inherently contingent and contested nature of heritage but also acknowledging its role in the legitimation of specific relationships of knowledge and power. This paper will build on these debates from a historical perspective, by discursively exploring the ways in which a distinct rhetori...
While the topography of Canada’s capital city has always included imported “ghosts”—symbols of bodies from perceived foundational conflicts that lie decomposing in foreign soil—the two newest additions to Ottawa’s commemorative landscape, the National Holocaust Monument and the Memorial to the Victims of Communism, sit uneasily. Somehow these “new” ghosts signal a shift in what was already a stifling memory practice. Besides the unconventional nature of the sites (on/near the Judiciary Pre...
This paper will approach the topic “What does heritage change?” by looking at the perspectives and experiences of a special category of heritage-makers, namely so-called “transmitters of intangible cultural heritage” (feiwuzhi wenhua yichan chuancheng ren) in China. It will explore the processes of heritagization and will ask whether, and what, heritage status changes when it comes to these individuals’ lives, identities, work, and their relationship with other actors involved in the herit...
Beyla, Guinée-Conakry, septembre 2008. Des miniers heurtent avec un bulldozer une roche réputée « sacrée » pour les villageois. De part et d’autre, l’événement entraîne des craintes spécifiques. Le minier craint d’avoir commis un acte sacrilège, offensant la « communauté ». Plus pragmatiques, les villageois redoutent l'abandon des travaux du fait des supposées conséquences de cet acte. Ils résolvent l’affaire en disant qu’il suffit de calmer le génie au moyen d’un sacrifice. Cet événement ...
Si de tout temps, la mission de l’Office nationale du film du Canada (ONF) a été de conférer au Canada une identité propre par la production et la diffusion de ses films, une des nouvelles priorités de l’institution, clairement affirmée dans son plus récent Plan stratégique de 2008–2013 est de répondre au défi d’un immense héritage audiovisuel, « d’un bien patrimonial d’une valeur inestimable pour la population canadienne et mondiale. ». En se donnant comme mission de rendre accessible son...