Monika Mokre was born in Graz, Austria, and studied Media and Communication Research and Political Science. She was Research Fellow at the Research Unit for Socio-Economics, Austrian Academy of Sciences, before she co-founded FOKUS, the Austrian Association for Cultural Economics and Policy Studies, and changed to the IWE, Research Unit for Institutional Change and European Integration, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Today she is Deputy Director of EIF – Institute for European Integration Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Chairwoman of FOKUS, the Austrian Association for Cultural Economics and Policy Studies and Lecturer at the Universities Innbruck, Salzburg and Vienna. Her main research areas are European Democracy and Public Sphere, Cultural Politics and Financing of the Arts, Media Politics and Gender Studies.
Recent Publications: The State of Europe. Transformations of Statehood from a European Perspective, 2004 (with Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, Michael Latzer, eds.); Europas Identitäten. Mythen, Konflikte, Konstruktionen, 2003 (with Gilbert Weiss, Rainer Bauböck, eds.); URBANe Kulturen. Kunst und Kultur in der Stadtentwicklung am Beispiel von URBAN Wien Gürtel Plus, 2002 (with Shams Asadi); Imaginierte Kulturen - reale Kämpfe. Annotationen zu Huntingtons "Kampf der Kulturen", 2000.
Speaker at Session 1: Narrating Heritage
There is, for one, the still hegemonic view that the cultural heritage is a concept so obvious to everybody that there is no need to talk about it in any fundamental way. We can find this position in the richly illustrated folders for tourists that are published in most parts of the world. On the base of this unquestioned understanding, studies on cultural management and politics develop a broad portfolio of recommendations for the best ways to deal with the heritage: Should it be used to attract tourism and, if yes, how? Or are tourists detrimental to the heritage? Should those whose heritage it is, those who “own it”, have privileged access? Can the heritage be combined with contemporary architecture, can it be used for contemporary arts productions, or is this a form of desecration?
This hegemonic discourse of obviousness is attacked by those maintaining that the cultural heritage is a construction of a dominant culture. Thus, also subordinated cultures have a cultural heritage that should be recognized. This broader understanding leads, inevitably, to rather tricky definitional issues as can be concretely seen in the UNESCO list of the cultural heritage currently including 644 properties. Additionally, UNESCO very plausibly argues that there is also an intangible cultural heritage that should not be neglected. While this approach seems not only justified but even just and fair, the question arises which purpose such a broad definition of the heritage serves.
Again, the answer to this question is rather trivial. The cultural heritage is about cultural identity. Mostly, official documents of international and supranational origin try to develop this argument in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, the cultural heritage is part and possession of a specific culture, on the other hand, it is part of a universal cultural heritage and, thus, possession of all mankind.
This, in due turn, leads us to a new series of evident assumptions, this time on a meta-level: The past is a construction of the present. Identity is a construction of bits and pieces of an imagined past (and possibly an imagined future). Identity excludes and devaluates those not sharing this identity. Universalism is an especially successful form of hegemonizing one’s identity. And cultural relativism is another form of universalism.
We can use all these arguments as a toolkit to deconstruct all forms of discourse on the cultural heritage – be they regional, national, supranational or international, traditionalist or progressive, modern or post-modern. This is important in order to understand the function of the cultural heritage for culture, politics, and society.
But where does it leave us with regard to our own position to the cultural heritage? Is it a notion that should simply be rejected as it necessarily leads either to hegemony and oppression or to insolvable cultural conflicts? But what, if the cultural heritage actually matters to people and, especially, the subordinate, the oppressed? Should we just stick to our theoretical supremacy and exclaim with Hegel: All the worse for reality! Or is there a way to deal with the cultural heritage in spite of everything?
