Intangible Heritage and Erasure: Rethinking Cultural Preservation and Contemporary Museum Practice

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilena Alivizatou

AbstractThis article builds on recent discussions on intangible heritage following the adoption of the relevant convention by UNESCO in 2003. The emergence of intangible heritage in the international heritage scene is tied up with fears of cultural homogenization and the need to protect the world's diversity. For a number of critics, however, UNESCO's normative framework raises questions around the institutionalization of culture as a set of endangered and disappearing ways of life. The article reviews these institutional approaches to cultural preservation in relation to the politics of erasure, the creative interplay of heritage destruction and renewal. This is then further examined against the backdrop of indigenous identity politics played out in two contested public arenas: the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-551

Alivizatou, Marilena, “Intangible Heritage and Erasure: Rethinking Cultural Preservation and Contemporary Museum Practice” 37


Author(s):  
Aileen Moreton-Robinson

In this issue of Kalfou, my book The White Possessive: Power, Property, and Indigenous Sovereignty receives attention from three scholars whose work I admire and respect. George Lipsitz’s The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics was seminal in conceptualizing the possessive logics of patriarchal white sovereignty, while Fiona Nicoll’s From Diggers to Drag Queens: Configurations of Australian National Identity heavily influenced my work on the formation of white national identity. Kim TallBear’s Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science has been instructive in shaping my new work on the possessive racial logics of Indigenous identity fraud. I am honored they ha


Author(s):  
Oli Wilson

This chapter explores how the New Zealand popular music artist Tiki Taane subverts dominant representational practices concerning New Zealand cultural identity by juxtaposing musical ensembles, one a ‘colonial’ orchestra, the other a distinctively Māori (indigenous New Zealand) kapa haka performance group, in his With Strings Attached: Alive & Orchestrated album and television documentary, released in 2014. Through this collaboration, Tiki reframes the colonial experience as an amalgam of reappropriated cultural signifiers that enraptures those that identify with colonization and colonizing experiences, and in doing so, expresses a form of authorial agency. The context of Tiki’s subversive approach is contextualized by examining postcolonial representational practices surrounding Māori culture and orchestral hybrids in the western art music tradition, and through a discussion about the ways the performance practice called kapa haka is represented through existing scholarly studies of Māori music.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Coralie O’Hara

<p>The repatriation of human remains from museum collections is becoming increasingly common in museums around the world and particularly in New Zealand. Even the most amicable repatriation cases are complex, requiring a substantial commitment of time, energy and resources from museum staff involved in the negotiation process, to successfully overcome any issues that arise. Although it is known that the repatriation process can be challenging, the literature on the subject in museum studies and related fields focuses on the beneficial outcomes of successful negotiations, rather than explaining what difficulties can be encountered and how they can be solved. This research asks how problems in the repatriation process can be overcome to create mutually rewarding relationships between museums and others involved in the repatriation of human remains. This problem was addressed through a case study of the Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Programme at Te Papa and three examples of their work: the Natural History Museum in Rouen, France; the British Museum in London; and the Rangitāne o Wairau iwi in New Zealand. Documentary evidence relating to these three repatriation examples was reviewed and the insights of museum staff have been captured through interviews with professionals from Karanga Aotearoa, Auckland Museum and Tairāwhiti Museum in Gisborne. Together these methods provided data that presented a more detailed and rounded picture of the current New Zealand situation regarding the repatriation of human remains. The dissertation concludes by assessing the difficulties in the practical repatriation process and how they have been overcome in New Zealand museums. I argue that repatriation practice, as an important area of museum practice in its own right, requires a flexible approach based on the principle of open-minded engagement with the perspectives of others involved in repatriation negotiations. This approach, focusing on relationships rather than transactions, is a marked departure from more traditional museum practice.</p>


Author(s):  
Cristina Lleras

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the surge of identity politics and the diversification of heritage and the tensions that arise with the traditional role of national museums that are expected to support the model of a unitary national identity through their narratives and collections. Engaging with distinct patrimonies and transformations in museums checkmates stagnant notions of heritage, but in turn, these actions might also instigate resistance to change. A case study at the National Museum of Colombia will provide an insight into competing notions of heritage, which can be understood as the relics of a material past, but may also be seen as the meanings created about the past. This analysis instigates thoughts about the role that history and historians might play in the elaboration of narratives of identity.


Zootaxa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 3588 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID L. STEIN

A review of all snailfishes from New Zealand waters deposited in the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Ton-garewa showed that six genera and at least 18 species occur within the New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone. Of these,one genus and 16 species are new. These new taxa, described here, are Aetheliparis taurocanis n.g., n.sp. from near Moa Seamount at 731–869 m, Careproctus narilobus from the Chatham Plateau at about 1830 m, C. pellucicauda andParaliparis pseudokreffti from the Bounty Trough at 2786–2821 m, P. exilis from the southeast Chatham slope, P. free-borni and P. pearcyi from the northeast Chatham Rise at 1044–1050 and 1218 m respectively, Osteodiscus rhepostomiasfrom the Bounty Trough at 2786–2821 m, Psednos argyrogaster from the east Chatham Rise at 1015–1037 m, P. chathamifrom the Chatham Rise at 1335–1340 m, P. cryptocaeca from off the Otago Canyons at 118–121 m, P. longiventris fromthe Chatham Rise at 1054–1058 m, P. microstomus from Reinga Ridge at 1158–1230 m, P. nemnezi from the Pegasus Can-yon and south Chatham Rise at 862–960 m, P. platyoperculosus from Chatham Rise at 1141–1163 m, and P. struthersifrom the southern Havre Trough at 1411–1428 m. The two previously known species from New Zealand waters are Care-proctus novaezelandiae Andriashev and Notoliparis kermadecensis (Nielsen). In addition, several specimens of Parali-paris and Psednos could not be identified or described because of their poor condition, but do not seem to be the same asany of the 18 described species. Partial descriptions are provided for them. This paper describes the new taxa, reviews the known taxa, and provides keys to their identification.


Author(s):  
Dominic O'Sullivan

Recognising difference does not undermine liberalism’s protection of individual rights. Indigenous identity must come from somewhere. It is heavily shaped by culture and derives meaning from communal relationships. However, the degree to which difference and diversity ought to co-exist is contested. Public attitudes to differentiation and diversity influence the opportunities and practices of indigenous civil society. The tension as an intellectual contest between liberal democracy’s capacity for inclusion and its practical tendency to exclude. The chapter assesses examples of democratic inclusion and exclusion in Australia and New Zealand for the political values they reflect, before proposing the concept as one that might contribute stability and coherence to Fijian politics as foundational conditions for the greater self-determination that indigenous Fijians seek.


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