Itineraries, iconoclasm, and the pragmatics of heritage

Abstract

Recent calls across the world for removing monuments to White supremacy have brought widespread attention to the power of images and the role of heritage in society. A more careful examination of heritage’s itineraries and pragmatics—its practical effects—is thus warranted. This paper interrogates the pragmatics of heritage in two ways. First, what are the discourses and rhetorics of heritage—how is heritage invoked and talked about, like a sign of history, in making statements about the world? Second, what does heritage do, as a sign in history, when it is invoked, encountered, and circulated? What does heritage activate, and what are the practical effects of its itineraries? Drawing on the examples of the return of the Euphronios krater to Italy and the removal of Confederate and racist monuments in the US and elsewhere, I argue that while operating in these two modes—as signs of and in history—heritage’s greatest potential for transformational change is when it ceases acting as a rhetorical device and instead becomes itself the center of experiential social action.