Cultural Heritage of Conflict: Peacebuilding and the Politics of Memory

Violence leaves a tangible and intangible legacy and societies emerging from war and conflict have to deal with a difficult heritage. The sites of conflict are tangibly present in the post-conflict realm: scars on buildings from grenades and bullets, remnants of dividing walls and crossings. Things such as guns and bones from killing fields or everyday objects of living through war are often displayed in museums. The materiality of memory is also present through photographs, films and websites. In addition, meaningful cultural heritage sites after conflict also include what is not in-the-place, e.g. atrocity sites such as unmarked massgraves former rape camps that do not display any acknowledgement of the past crimes. These voids may serve as counter-narrative heritage sites that disrupt hegemonic remembering (and forgetting).

The project investigates what role such difficult cultural heritage of conflict plays in transitions to peace. It explores and theorizes the links between tangible cultural heritage of material sites and things and intangible cultural heritage. The project does so by employing a conceptual framework that takes into consideration how sites and things that constitute the legacy of the conflict produce ‘social ensembles’ of agents, narratives and events.