Contenu du sommaire : Patrimoine, une histoire politique

Historians and Heritage in the 20th Century
After describing our contemporary obsession with cultural heritage, the introduction to this issue highlights the political dimension of heritage, observing in particular the importance of the processes used to select, identify, standardize and communicate the elements that are ultimately recognized as legitimate components of a collective cultural heritage. Paradoxically enough, throughout the 20th century, historians have been largely absent from the dynamic processes used to determine establish heritage. We therefore take a look at this missed opportunity to better understand how historians were shut out of the discussion but also how other disciplines and professions have gradually inserted themselves into the highly political task of establishing heritage.

Heritage as Present-Day Politics
How can we explain the shift from a relationship to heritage that was anchored in the past to a kind of heritage that keeps speaking in the present tense? In this interview, conducted by Pascale Goetschel and Yann Potin, Francois Hartog, a specialist in Greek antiquity and various “regimes of historicity”, discusses the historical transformations that have affected the concept of heritage and the practices associated therewith. Describing the decline, since the 1980s, of a traditional vision of heritage that was centred on historical monuments and exploited the past to shed light on the future, Hartog observes the rise of the heritage industry – the result of the growing role of memory in the public sphere – an industry which takes the present as its horizon and uses emotions as a means of communication. While the genealogy that Hartog proposes remains limited by Western forms of relating to past in the present, it is nonetheless a way to measure the stakes that are always present when dealing with the question of heritage.

Is Cultural Heritage a Legal and Political Construct?
Many historical studies on heritage emphasize the legal dimension, in large part because the history of cultural heritage is deeply rooted in the law – and, inevitably, therefore, closely interlinked with the history of the State. Cultural heritage maintains a very complex relationship with the law on the one hand, and with the State on the other hand, a relationship that cannot be reduced to the mere instrumentalisation of cultural heritage by State, by means of the law. This article examines the central role played by the law in the heritage debate from two different perspectives. First, from an extra-legal perspective, this article investigates the role played by the law in the construction of heritage. Secondly, from an internal perspective, it looks at how heritage has been defined and mobilised by the French legal system. Does the heritage law simply express the State's power deployed in favour of the preservation of heritage? Or does it reveal the conviction, more or less clearly expressed, that heritage is a shared and collective resource?

Heritage in the Light of Transnational History
The notion of “patrimony” or cultural heritage has long been deeply intertwined with the concept of identity and has consequently been developed as a historical subject associated with national identity and representation. For that reason, however, it has been examined from within the framework of national histories. A variety of recent research projects – which studied, inter alia, the circulation of objects resulting in public collections, material exchanges between institutions representing heritage, and the impact of cultural flows on the evolution of museums – illustrate a new shared ambition to look at the process of creating historical legacies from a different perspective. The 1930s are a particularly useful period for examining the transnational dimension of such phenomena, as that decade laid the conceptual groundwork and established the institutional mechanisms that have helped to us to define the concept of cultural heritage and develop our imaginaries and practices with regard to heritage.

The Rise of Ethnological Heritage (1975-1984)In 1980, the creation of a government service and a scientific board devoted to ethnological heritage was the result of both the official implementation of an administrative report and the unofficial influence wielded by a close associate of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Along with the support of the Endowment for Cultural Intervention and the Department of Studies of the Ministry of Culture, this service ultimately legitimized the contribution of militant ethnography, as practised by associations working to revive traditional forms of music and dance, with the Union Poitou-Charentes pour la culture populaire [Poitou-Charentes Association for Popular Culture] leading the charge. Nonetheless, as this service was largely incompatible with the desire to professionalize French ethnology, the co-construction of a heritage policy building off of this social movement quickly fizzled out.

“Soviet Heritage” from the USSR to Contemporary Russia
One hundred years after the October Revolution, the material vestiges of the Soviet past remain omnipresent. Taking a wide variety of forms scattered throughout a large geographical space, these traces of the past invite us to reflect on the existence of “Soviet heritage”. This article seeks to contribute to a wide-lens genealogy of the concept of Soviet heritage, describing its trajectory from its creation to its status as a renewed subject of interest in Russia. The treatment of Soviet heritage is shown as being closely linked to crucial moments in both Soviet and post-Soviet sociopolitical life in Russia, ultimately acting as a means to legitimate and reassert State power.

Birth, Implementation and Elimination of the “20 th Century Heritage” Label
Developed by the Ministry of Culture between 1998 and 2001, the “20 th-century heritage” label sought to recognise the architectural heritage of the contemporary period. It was designed to highlight the achievements of famous architects, as well as the significance of buildings that had not previously been recognised as forms of cultural heritage (social housing, industrial buildings). However, there were no legal constraints associated with the label. During the 2000s, the success of its implementation was mixed, being quite widespread in some regions but almost non-existent in others. The label's variable implementation raised questions about its relevance: in 2016, following the adoption of new legislation on heritage, the label was eliminated and replaced by a new label, titled “remarkable contemporary architecture”, whose connotations were thus markedly different.

The Memorials of the Democratic Kampuchea Regime in Cambodia
In 1979, the Democratic Kampuchea regime collapsed. Amidst a particularly complex geopolitical situation, the new regime, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), promptly implemented measures to memorialise and preserve the history of the Pol Pot era. In Phnom Penh, a former Khmer Rouge security centre was transformed into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In the provinces, the bones of victims were gathered and interred in structures that simultaneously served political, penal and commemorative purposes. After the changes that unfolded during the 1990s and despite the failure of the memorial project launched by the PRK, the Tuol Sleng Museum, as well as certain memorial sites and the bones they housed, gradually became testimonial “goods” constituting an unprecedented form of heritage in Cambodia. Drawing on fieldwork, as well as archival and bibliographical sources, this article sheds light on such memorial sites by highlighting the political context in which they were created and the commemorative ambitions that they embodied, as well as the process of establishing heritage and the various practices to which these sites are now subject.

Heritage as Family Business and Spiritual Expertise in Sioux Country
What can heritage mean for a territory that has never been decolonized? The implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) with regard to the Standing Rock Native American reservation demonstrates how those involved in heritage preservation and repatriation can simultaneously bolster the classic vision of heritage as a set of objects and practices to be preserved, while attacking the colonial nature of the institutions used to protect heritage. Far from being a mere act of transfer between sovereign States, repatriation challenges the very notion of heritage by permitting the performance of rituals whose organizers – spiritual specialists recognised by law – blur the distinction between the dead and the living, as well as been specialists and non-specialists. More than anything, it highlights the central role of family ties in the local socio-political uses of heritage.

Sacred Spaces and Massacres Sites after the Tutsi Genocide
Drawing on the archives of the National Anti-Genocide Commission, the organization tasked with the remembrance of the Rwandan genocide, this article seeks to understand the controversy regarding how to memorialise churches that operated as genocide sites between 1994 and 2003. This article focuses on three particular dimensions. It first analyses the theological debate on the subsequent purification of churches that had been massacre sites during the genocide. Then, it looks at the political negotiations between the Rwandan State and the Catholic Church on the historical legacy of these churches. Finally, it examines the geopolitical dimension of these debates and the influence of the Vatican. In conclusion, the author analyses the current national and international controversies regard these sites.