Difficult and Dark Heritage Making “From Below”

Dear Colleagues,

The past presents us with us with a legacy that can be positive as well as negative. While the tendency is generally to only play up narratives of heritage that align with contemporary objectives such as tourism and nation-building, dark and difficult heritages that potentially go against these objectives are often suppressed or, worse, completely excised from dominant representations. This, however, does not mean they are forgotten, as non-state agents of memory may still continue to mark these memories privately in various ways.  

These alternative forms of remembrances notwithstanding, many sites of past death and suffering have also become major tourist attractions today. This therefore brings to mind questions related to what is legitimate for visitors to do and not to do in those sites, and how visitors may react to the sites and their difficult heritage as formally rendered. Hence, the political meaning of their practices on a site become key elements to appreciate the complexity and the inherently contested nature of any spatial re-enactment of difficult past events.

This Special Issue seeks to critically explore how alternative—to the dominant—forms and practices of heritage, especially those charged with dark and difficult associations, are represented and performed ‘from below’ by non-state groups and individuals. It invites interventions that are focused on personal, often ephemeral, individual experiences of institutional heritage sites tied to controversial histories, at times ‘socializing’ such sites to divert if not transgress their official meanings, as well as other, perhaps more non-conventional, ways in which individuals (and groups) may remember these controversial and difficult histories ‘in their own ways’. Contributions addressing the myriad practices and politics related to the visit of sites marked by a difficult or dark past, or more private and potentially subversive remembrances of this difficult or dark past, are particularly welcomed.

Dr. Hamzah Muzaini
Guest Editor

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• Difficult heritage
• Dark tourism
• Politics of memory
• Heritage from below