The Heritage of Heritage

AbstractAbstractThe preservationist paradigm of heritage and the contemporary heritage discourse can best be understood as firmly situated in a specific historical and cultural context of European (and by extension global) civilization of the past few centuries. Contemporary heritage policies and practices are a result of a particular historical trajectory that will keep evolving in the future, and future heritage may not resemble past and present heritage at all. In this paper, I reflect on what the concept of cultural heritage, the conservation ethos, and heritage-related artifacts and technologies are able to reveal about our own time. Given the current significance of heritage, the obsession in our age with preservation, and the inevitable historical transitoriness of both, the question emerges whether it would be worth to try to preserve the heritage of heritage for the future. Rather than remembering the past, future generations may want to remember remembering the past.