Heritage, Affect and Emotion: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures

320 Pages·2016·15.89 MB·English

by  Divya P. Tolia-Kelly

Heritage, Affect and Emotion

Heritage and its economies are driven by affective politics and consolidated
through emotions such as pride, awe, joy and pain. In the humanities and social
sciences, there is a widespread acknowledgement of the limits not only of
language and subjectivity, but also of visuality and representation. Social scien-
tists, particularly within cultural geography and cultural studies, have recently
attempted to define and understand that which is more-than-representational,
through the development of theories of affect, assemblage, post-humanism and
actor–network theory, to name a few. While there have been some recent attempts
to draw these lines of thinking more forcefully into the field of heritage stud-
ies, this book focuses for the first time on relating heritage with the politics of
affect. The volume argues that our engagements with heritage are almost entirely
figured through the politics of affective registers such as pain, loss, joy, nostal-
gia, pleasure, belonging or anger. It brings together a number of contributions
that collectively – and with critical acuity – question how researchers working
in the field of heritage might begin to discover and describe affective experi-
ences, especially those that are shaped and expressed in moments and spaces that
can be, at times, intensely personal, intimately shared and ultimately social. It
explores current theoretical advances that enable heritage to be affected, released
from conventional understandings of both heritage-as-objects and objects-as-
representations by opening it up to a range of new meanings, emergent and formed
in moments of encounter. While representational understandings of heritage are
by no means made redundant through this agenda, they are destabilized and can
thus be judged anew in light of these developments. Each chapter offers a novel
and provocative contribution, provided by an interdisciplinary team of research-
ers who are thinking theoretically about affect through landscapes, practices of
commemoration, visitor experience, site interpretation and other heritage work.
Divya P. Tolia-Kelly is Reader in the Department of Geography at Durham
University, UK.
Emma Waterton is Associate Professor in the Geographies of Heritage at Western
Sydney University, Australia.
Steve Watson is Professor of Cultural Heritage at York St John University, UK.
Critical Studies in Heritage, Emotion and Affect
Series editors:
Divya Tolia-Kelly (Durham University) and Emma Waterton (Western Sydney
University)
In Memory of Professor Steve Watson (1958–2016)

This book series, edited by Divya P. Tolia-Kelly and Emma Waterton, is dedi-
cated to Professor Steve Watson. Steve was a pioneer in heritage studies and was
inspirational in both our personal academic trajectories. We, as three editors of the
series, started this journey together, but alas we lost his magnificent scholarship
and valued counsel too soon.
The series brings together a variety of new approaches to heritage as a significant
affective cultural experience. Collectively, the volumes in the series provide ori-
entation and a voice for scholars who are making distinctive progress in a field
that draws from a range of disciplines, including geography, history, cultural stud-
ies, archaeology, heritage studies, public history, tourism studies, sociology and
anthropology – as evidenced in the disciplinary origins of contributors to current
heritage debates. The series publishes a mix of speculative and research-informed
monographs and edited collections that will shape the agenda for heritage research
and debate. The series engages with the concept and practice of Heritage as co-
constituted through emotion and affect. The series privileges the cultural politics
of emotion and affect as key categories of heritage experience. These are the reg-
isters through which the authors in the series engage with theory, methods and
innovations in scholarship in the sphere of heritage studies.
Published
Heritage, Affect and Emotion
Politics, practices and infrastructures
Edited by Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Emma Waterton and Steve Watson
Heritage, Affect and
Emotion
Politics, practices and
infrastructures

Edited by Divya P. Tolia-Kelly,
Emma Waterton and
Steve Watson
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2017 selection and editorial material, Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Emma
Waterton and Steve Watson; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Emma Waterton and Steve Watson to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or reg-
istered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tolia-Kelly, Divya Praful. | Waterton, Emma. | Watson, Steve.
Title: Heritage, affect and emotion: politics, practices and infrastructures /
edited by Divya P. Tolia-Kelly, Emma Waterton and Steve Watson.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge,
2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002731| ISBN 9781472454874 (hardback) | ISBN
9781315586656 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Cultural property–Psychological aspects. | Historic
preservation–Psychological aspects. |A ffect (Psychology)–Social aspects.
| Emotions–Social aspects. | Cultural property–Protection–Research.
| Historic preservation–Research. | Cultural property–Protection–Social
aspects. | Cultural property–Protection–Political aspects. | Historic
preservation–Social aspects. | Historic preservation–Political aspects.
Classification: LCC CC135 .H44 2016 | DDC 152.4–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002731
ISBN: 978-1-4724-5487-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-58665-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK
Steve Watson, 14 June 1958–22 January 2016
Steve died on January 22, 2016, aged 57 and has left a large crater in our lives. His
influence was international, and yet his spirit was immediate and personal. This
spirit is etched in our everyday practice, both at home and at work. Steve's mod-
esty steered us, and continues to pedagogically shape our practice. His intellect

served to enrich our own, as he touched us with care and warmth. He practiced his
vocation with elegance and humanity, and a collegiality that is rare. We hope that
we can do justice to his memory by continuing in the spirit of his engagement with
the world, without any hint of superiority, disrespect or derision. Steve was a true
scholar and friend; one we doubt we will see the like of again soon. This volume
was conceived and shaped with his lead and completed with his companionship:
we dedicate it to him.
Photo courtesy of the Watson family
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of figures ix
Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction: heritage, affect and emotion 1
Education Education
DIvYA P. TOLIA-KELLY, EMMA WATERTON AND STEvE WATSON
1 Making polysense of the world: affect, memory, heritage 12
JOY SAETHdEuR-cWaAtGiSoTnA FF
PArT I
Memories 31
2 race and affect at the museum: the museum as a theatre of pain 33
DIvYA P. TOLIA-KELLY
3 Affecting the body: cultures of militarism at the Australian
War Memorial 47
Education
JASON DITTMER AND EMMA WATERTON
4 Affect and the politics of testimony in Holocaust museums 75
STEvEN COOKE AND DONNA-LEE FRIEzE
5 Museum canopies and affective cosmopolitanism: cultivating
cross-cultural landscapes for ethical embodied responses 93
PHILIPP SCHORCH, EMMAE WdATuEcRaTOtiNo AnN D SETEdvuEc WaAtTiSoOnN
6 Constructing affective narratives in transatlantic
slavery museums in the UK 114
LEANNE MUNROE
viii Contents
PArT II
Places 133
7 Overlooking affect? Vertigo as geo-sensitive industrial
heritage at Malakoff Diggins, California 135
GARETH HOSKINS

8 The castle imagined: emotion and affect in the
experience of ruins 154
Education
DUNCAN LIGHT AND STEvE WATSON
9 From Menie to Montego Bay: documenting, representing
and mobilising emotion in coastal heritage landscapes 179
SUSAN P. MAINS
10 Touching time: photography, affect and the digital archive 201
LáSzLó MUNTEáN
11 Commemoration, heritage, and affective ecology: the case
of Utøya 219
BRITTA TIMM KNUDSEN AND JAN IFvERSEN
12 Social housing as built heritage: the presence and absence
of affective heritage 237
SOPHIE YARKER
PArT III
Practices 255
13 ‘Please Mr President, we know you are busy, but can
you get our bridge sorted?’ 257
KEITH EMERICK
14 Dark seas and glass walls – feeling injustice at the museum
Practitioner perspectives: rosanna raymond 276
Education
AN INTERvIEW WITH ROSANNA RAYMOND BY
DIvYA P. TOLIA-KELLY
Index 293
Figures

3.1 “Tail End Charlie” 48
3.2 The Lone Pine diorama 59
3.3 The First World War galleries, prior to their
redevelopment 60
3.4 The Kapyong faces: in photographs and the
Kapyong diorama 61
3.5 The ghostly figures of the Menin Gate at Midnight 63
3.6 “Anzac Hall,” Striking By Night sound and light show 64
3.7 “Dust Off ” in the vietnam War gallery 66
3.8 The Bridge, HMAS Brisbane 68
3.9 The Discovery zone helicopter 69
4.1 History You Can’t Erase poster 82
5.1 Signs of a Nation/Ngā Tohu Kotahitanga exhibition
within Te Papa 99
5.2 Leaving Home long-term exhibition, Immigration
Museum, Melbourne 100
5.3 Te Hau ki Turanga in the Mana Whenua exhibition 102
5.4 Leaving Dublin: Photographs by David Monahan
touring exhibition 2012–13, Immigration Museum,
Melbourne 105
7.1 Panoramic strip of view from Chute Hill
Campground Overlook 138
7.2 Chute Hill campground overlook sign 142
7.3 Marker posts on the Diggins Loop Trail 146
8.1 Landscape with castles: Dunstanburgh, Northumberland 156
8.2 The castle (re-)assembled, Bamburgh, UK:
Norman with later restoration 162
8.3 The castle experienced: the remains of a staircase
at Bolton Castle, UK 167
8.4 Dizzy heights at Bolton Castle, UK 169
8.5 Dangerous places, Monolithos, Rhodes 172
8.6 The castle imagined: a moment of reverie at
Warkworth, UK 174