The Pragmatic Semiotics of Cultural Heritage

Summary

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? How has that shifted over time, as the term is increasingly invoked to explain and defend a wide range of actions and attitudes, and how do the different discursive communities who speak about heritage engage (or not) with one another? Most importantly, why have these discursive transformations not been accompanied by similar transformations in policy? The answer to that last question requires us to consider a second mode of heritage, namely, what does heritage do, as a sign in history, when it is invoked, encountered, and circulated? What does heritage activate, and what are its "practical effects"? Drawing on several examples including the recent removal of confederate monuments in the US, 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, such as through its encounter, circulation, or being made visible (or invisible).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22321