Heritage is a conservative idea (and this cannot be allowed to stand)

Treasuring heritage is a deeply conservative idea. Indeed conservatives are criticised for almost fetishising the past, for seeing in heritage the means by which we guide the future - Roger Scruton's collection of American Spectator essays is called the "Western Heritage" and The Heritage Foundation is perhaps the USA's most important conservative think tank. Heritage matters to us.

So, it should come as no surprise that, in the manner of modern academia, the conservative 'ownership' of heritage as an idea must be challenged. As if it is some old statue in the corner of a square that represents 'troubling views', the conservative idea that what has gone before matters and should be treasured requires destruction. Welcome to "Critical HeritageStudies":

Above all, we want you to critically engage with the proposition that heritage studies needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, which requires the ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing’. Heritage is, as much as anything, a political act and we need to ask serious questions about the power relations that ‘heritage’ has all too often been invoked to sustain. Nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, cultural elitism, Western triumphalism, social exclusion based on class and ethnicity, and the fetishising of expert knowledge have all exerted strong influences on how heritage is used, defined, and managed. We argue that a truly critical heritage studies will ask many uncomfortable questions of traditional ways of thinking about and doing heritage, and that the interests of the marginalised and excluded will be brought to the forefront when posing these questions. 

The mission is a sort of anti-heritage year zero approach to the framing of history in society. Some of what emerges really isn't new - ideas around oral and working class history, for example - but the subject is presented as an attack on "...the conservative cultural and economic power relations that outdated understandings of heritage seem to underpin."

Note here that not only is conservatism presented as an 'elite' mission, but its ideas are 'outdated'. And, with a search for wider dimensions of heritage ("...truly international through the synergy of taking seriously diverse non-Western cultural heritage traditions...), Critical Heritage Studies disconnects heritage from place. This connection is to be rejected for it "...privileges old, grand, prestigious, expert approved sites, buildings and artefacts that sustain Western narratives of nation, class and science." I assume that ideas like 'world heritage sites' or 'listed buildings' maintain this privilege requiring an (unspecified) new way of thinking about heritage.

For The Heritage Foundation, that which needs preserving is the set of ideas - "(f)ree enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense" - that are at the heart of that nation's reason for being. And these ideas are symbolised by both built heritage and by a set of national symbols. The conservative idea that Critical Heritage Studies seems to think 'outdated' is that these ideas, the buildings, or places that help contain them, and the symbols that embody them are the essential core of American heritage.

The same applies to British, French, Indian or Chinese heritage. It is inevitably linked to place and to the events that shaped that place. And, yes, this means some sites, buildings, or artifacts matter more in national identity, history or culture than do others. For all that it might chafe, the Houses of Parliament are a more significant heritage site than Bradford Town Hall, and Lullingstone Villa than our little Roman camp in Cullingworth.

The result of all this is an approach to the interpretation of heritage that focuses on guilt - for slavery, for wars, for sending kids down mines or up chimneys, for racism. A progressive panoply of sins paraded before the visitor designed to make him or her "think" or to "confront" the wrongdoing, expunging the guilt associated with the heritage place or object. The idea that progress is a function of confronting sin rather than the betterment of our lives sits at the heart of this 'critical' approach to heritage. This outlook denies us the right to celebrate the achievements of the past, or to simply stand impressed at what what done, at a building's magnificence, a paintings brilliance, or a room's opulence. We're not permitted to look at the Magna Carta and cherish that in it are the seeds of the ideas The Heritage Foundation aim to protect - freedom and equality under the law.

Nostalgia should not push aside truth but, equally, we should not ignore the cultural importance of heritage as simply our heritage just to berate people with a list of past failings requiring atonement. Above all we cannot load onto the past the (or a carefully curated selection of) values of today. Heritage, whether it's a museum collection or a library of folk songs, is a conservative idea and seeking to exclude conservatives is yet another example of how academia seeks to infect public policy with the idea that simply describing what is before a person isn't sufficient. Instead everything must be 'challenged', every item or idea needs to be 'questioned', and every representation that conflicts with today's values either destroyed or hidden away. In this new critical heritage world, we haven't got the conservation of heritage but its selective exploitation to promote a specific minority worldview and to reject the idea that we can get pleasure from the mere fact of past achievements.

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