After Heritage

Drawing upon international case studies and building upon Iain J.M. Robertson’s work on ‘heritage from below’, this project sheds critical light on heritage-making and heritagescapes that are, more frequently than not, located in virtual, less conspicuous and more everyday spaces. The project considers the highly personal, often ephemeral, individual – vis-à-vis collective – experiences of (in)formal ways the past has been folded into contemporary societies. In doing so, it unravels the merits of examining more intimate materializations of heritage not only as a check against, but also complementary to, what Laurajanne Smith refers to as ‘Authorized Heritage Discourses’. It also argues against the tendency to romanticize the fleeting and largely obscured means through which alternative forms of heritage-making are produced, performed and patronized.