Σε μια από τις πρώτες-πρώτες αναρτήσεις μου σας είχα μιλήσει για το καταπληκτικό συνέδριο στο University of Massachussetts, Amherst, που είχε θέμα "Why Does the Past Matter?". Η δική μου εισήγηση είναι η κατωτέρω. Η ελληνική μετάφραση, που είχε αποτελέσει και τη βάση για εισήγησή μου στο Νομικό Συμβούλιο του Κράτους, τον Μάρτιο του 2012, αναρτήθηκε τον Αύγουστο.
Lodz, Πολωνία - Σεπτέμβριος 2010
Αρχαιολογικός χώρος Φιλίππων, Καβάλα - Απρίλιος 1993
Lodz, Πολωνία - Σεπτέμβριος 2010
Αρχαιολογικός χώρος Φιλίππων, Καβάλα - Απρίλιος 1993
Επιτρέψτε μου!: Του έχω μεγάλη αδυναμία! Ο μέγιστος Albert Camus. Αλγερία - Γαλλία: Δύο χώρες, δύο πολιτισμοί που συνέβαλαν σημαντικά, νομίζω, στη διαμόρφωση του χαρακτήρα του. Έζησε σύμφωνα ακριβώς με όσα πίστευε και υποστήριζε. Σπάνιο, πολύ σπάνιο...
Elina
N. Moustaira
Because what I am is what I was.
I. One may speak about identity of people, identity of
cultural objects cultural identity of people and objects.
The concept of the historic continuity or the sense of
the tradition, on which we must rely and of which, of course, not only the
monuments as cultural creations of people are manifestations, can constitute a
sort of moral justification for the defense of our identity’s particularities[1]. A human being is a historic being, to his/her
creation myriads of partial elements are contributing, which elements, visibly
or invisibly, either are recorded in his/her ancestors’ cells or compose
his/her daily life, carrying with them traces of many previous daily lives.
Cultural objects are prints of memory, tracks of
journey, sometimes strong, sometimes thin. Cultural objects, material or
immaterial, have their origin, the reason of their existence, in the life
conditions of a society, even in case they originate from certain persons, even
in case they are created as a reaction to those life conditions. Besides,
according to Homi Bhabha, it is the signs
of resistance that constitute a fundamental testimony of “our encounter with
identity”[2].
Cultural objects’ biography shows us the various folds
of the shaped with time identity of people, either individually, as persons, or
wholly, as community. During their life, they accumulate meanings, mainly
deduced from the relations developed between them and the people, by whom
or/and for whom they were created[3].
And it is extremely interesting the fact that, thinking comparatively, we see
that meanings vary, since relations between people and objects also vary, according
to the cultural context. Thus, cultural objects’ biography can contribute to
the revelation of this variety[4].
Cultural objects determine peoples’ history and are
determined by it. They are not accidental creations of an era, no identical
copies of them could be created in whatever historical period by whatever
people. Pebbles, therefore, of the historic path of various cultures, of
various nations, they occupy a singular place in history; and exactly due to
this singularity and to their importance they are often object of exploitation
by certain others whose aim is the alteration of this historic path. It is
rightly pointed out that individual asymmetries and the particular
characteristics of the various cultures are elements necessary for their life’s
continuation[5]. Besides, it is exactly the different, particular
characteristics of the compared objects the ones that compose the identity of
each one of them[6], since “an identity can only be limited, defined, and
bordered by what it is not”[7].
II. Stressing the singularity of the cultural objects and
focusing on their culture-origin, does not mean indifference to the conceivable
influences that this culture and its expressions have received by other
cultures. “No culture exists in isolation”, says Edward Said, insisting that by
studying a culture, we must be ready to locate and study the appearing during
that study characteristics of other cultures, of other traditions.
Studying, for example, the Islamic aesthetic theory,
it is observed that it was deeply influenced by the Neoplatonic theory – which
also influenced the architecture of Renaissance but even, through the Theosophy
movement, some of the pioneers of Modernism in art[8].
Said claims that talking about a “single overmastering
identity” constitutes a deprivation, that “the world we live in is made up of
numerous identities interacting, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes
antithetically”. But the fact that numerous identities are tracked down, does
not mean that an overmastering identity is not created by them [too], which
identity assimilates in some way, discernible or not, the other identities[9].
Besides, as a most important contemporary Greek
painter says, social evolution was never static, therefore neither the cultural
particularities of peoples or social groups were. “There were always
transformations and readjustments of the cultural identity and, even more, they
were constituent elements for its preservation or its survival”[10].
III. Identity is a highly complex value. At the same time,
it is highly important to the determination of persons, either as personal or
as group identity. Are differences illusory[11],
as the Enlightenment was suggesting, or are they really existing? And why would
differences be considered as an obstacle to the true understanding between the
various cultures?
Is identity being transformed? Would that be an
argument of those who are opposed to the repatriation of cultural objects? If
there is no “patria”, then – they say – where would the cultural objects return
to? But can we doubt the identity of people, the identity of their creations?
Is it possible to transform identity just by changing the way to describe it?
What would be the reason, the expediency for that? Can we change the way
certain people look at life? But exactly that look is at the origin of the
creation of cultural objects – even when they seem neutral. And the way to look
at life influences everything concerning life itself; and of course it
influences everything that is being created inside any living culture, which in
turn is the continuation and the reminder of some previous culture, even in
case the contemporary culture destroyed the previous one.
Identity is always historically and culturally
specific – or, at least, that is how we should see it[12].
Ethnicity, undoubtedly, “forms an integral part of personal identity,
contributes to determining a place in an increasingly complicated world”[13].
IV. The art objects produce significance, not only at the
time at which they were created. If they last, their meaning also flow and
becomes itself an active factor of culture. The surrounding social conditions
contribute to their creation but also the art objects themselves contribute in
some way to the modeling of the cultural environment[14].
Human dignity and societies’ identity do not “have” to
be expressed through art[15],
but art really does express them.
Heritage, that is the natural and immaterial elements that are related to a
human community and that are created and pass from generation to generation, or,
according to another opinion, the “natural and human world that society wishes
to pass on to future generations”[16],
gives material reality to identity[17].
Claiming repatriation of cultural objects, is a means to the restoration of the
“old” identity [of objects and peoples] and at the same time of the formation
of a new identity, based on the “old” one.
Particular historic products, besides, are the
countries’ laws in general and of course the specific regulations “that
envision cultural properties and the social identities imagined to pertain to
them”, according to an opinion[18].
Accordingly, it is important to have a clear image of
how the idea of cultural property (patrimonio
cultural) has been evaluated during many centuries from a particular point
of view, focused in private property and individual enjoyment, to an augmenting
tendency of showing monuments and art objects as model examples of the national
culture and symbols of the collective identity. If, according to this opinion,
we can really see this evolution, we shall be able, on the one hand to
understand the historic and artistic criteria that each time period and each
society uses in order to measure the value of the cultural objects, and on the other hand to explain the
whereabouts of the laws enacted to guarantee the preservation of the cultural objects,
or to justify the educative intentions whenever certain cultural objects are
presented as symbols of a certain identity and a certain civilization[19].
V. What is the role of the museums in
all this?
Museums can be seen as manifestations of identity or
sites for the contestation of identities.
Some
museums, and the big ones even more, insist on the majesty of the “universal
museum”[20],
in which, they say, cultural objects are being protected and preserved and at
the same time exhibited to the public. Thus, the “universal”, “encyclopedic” museum
becomes educator of the “world cultures”, hoping to “format” a sort of
cosmopolitan visitors, viewers. Is there, can there be, should there be a
uniform mentality, a uniform, cosmopolitan law? Would such a thing guarantee
the peaceful, rich coexistence of peoples and the mutual admiration of their
creations? But, would there be, in such a case, various creations or would such
a uniformity mean the death of richness, the death of creativity? Besides the
fact that cosmopolitanism is a theory, an idea embedded in the Western
intellectual tradition[21],
is there not a big risk, by supporting the idea of universal, cosmopolitan
museums, to destroy the resources of the reification of this very idea, that
is, the variety of cultural objects, since variety presupposes different
creators, different identities?
These objects, which are being exposed in the modern
museum, representing “the Art”, previously were often sacred objects, being
found in churches, or objects, belonging, either to the aristocrats or to the rich
merchants, decorating their palaces or residences. Thus, “the reunification in
one sole place of paintings, originally destined to assume the most diverse
functions in churches, palaces or private residences, reserves them now for a
unique usage: to be contemplated and appreciated for their sole aesthetic value”[22]. This way, sacred objects become differently neutral
and sacred in the museum. Their presence in the museum signifies their absence
in reality. They are art, because they
are not any more used in the reality[23].
VI. Preservation of the historic or traditional identity
means a continuous evolution of this identity, by means of a dialogue between
the various socio-cultural ideologies of each time. Thus, cultural objects too,
become determinative “moments” of the human life, defining its identity.
An excellent contemporary Greek author, in a recently
published interview of his, was declaring: “Hellenicity is this atmosphere
emitted by the lives of the people whom I describe, and exactly that is my inspiration.
… I grapple with people who live in this nature, under this light, they
themselves, their occupations and their traditions are adapted to this climate,
they speak making their daily life literature, they themselves are art objects,
as they live, despite their human smallness”[24].
Monuments, they say, represent something from the past
to the people of the present and future[25].
Memory, collective and individual, is the element that renders obvious (clear)
the connection of cultural objects and identity. Perhaps they are not wrong
whoever believe (assume) that our past and therefore our memory too do not have
a clearly defined borderline, formed by a tradition which had local and
national roots and precise borders[26].
Nevertheless, no one can seriously doubt that cultural objects constitute an
expression of the time period in which they were created, at the same time
though, they define directly or indirectly, each posterior time, since on the
one side they are a connecting ring with the past and on the other side they
form consciences (even at a minimum degree), thus participating in each
present. Elements, therefore, of the “then” identity [of their creator and
their spectators] – through their own cultural identity – they define (even
being transformed as concepts) the subsequent in time identities (pursuers –
heirs of the prior identities), constituting at the same time elements of those
posterior identities.
*
Paper presented at the International Conference “Why Does the Past Matter?”,
May 4-7, 2011, UMass Amherst.
[1] V. Ferreira Jorge, Património e Identidade Nacional, Engenharía Civil 2000, 5, 9.
[2] H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture,
Routledge Classics, London & New York, 1994 (reprinted 2010), 71.
[3] See I. Kopytoff, The
cultural biography of things: commoditization as process, in: The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (ed. A. Appadurai), Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1986, 64. He was the first who has ever talked
about the “cultural biography” of things.
[4] C. Gosden&Y. Marshall, The cultural biography of objects, World Archaeology 31 (1999) 169, 170.
[5] S. Ghoshray, Repatriation of the Kohinoor Diamond: Expanding the Legal Paradigm
for Cultural Heritage, 31 Fordham
International Law Journal 741, 768-9 (2008).
[6] P. Legrand, The same and the different, in:
Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and
Transitions (ed. P. Legrand/R. Munday), Cambridge University Press 2003,
240, 241, 263: “Identity, because it is a relation, demands, as the condition
of its very existence, the existence of a non-identity that exists outside of
it”.
[7] D. Venema, Transitional Shortcuts to Justice and National Identity, Ratio Juris 2011, 88, 97.
[8] A. Powell, Neoplatonism and Geometry in Islamic Art, Association of Art Historians 1998, 135, 138-139.
[9] E. Said, Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler, in: Reflections
on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, Granta Books, London 2000,
386, 396.
[10] S. Sorogas, Texts about persons and
books [in greek], Melanibooks,
Athens 2011, 114-115.
[11] C. Luzzati, Matters of Identity, Ratio
Juris 2005, 107, 110.
[12] S.J. Macdonald, Museums, national, postnational and transcultural identities, Museum and Society 2003, 1.
[13] J. Jacobs, Repatriation and the Reconstruction of Identity, Museum Anthropology 2009, 83, 85.
[14] A. Val Cubero, Una aproximación metodológica en el análisis de las obras de
arte, Arte, Individuo y Sociedad
2010, 63, 64.
[15] N. Dias, Cultural Difference and Cultural Diversity, in: Museums and Difference
(D.J. Sherman, ed.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis
2008, 124, 148.
[16] S. Ashley, State Authority and the Public Sphere : Ideas on the Changing
Role of the Museum as a Canadian Social Institution, Museum and Society 2005, 5.
[17] L. Smith, Uses of Heritage,
Routledge, London and New York 2006, 48.
[18] R. Handler, Cultural property and culture theory, Journal of Social Anthropology 2003, 353, 363, who claims that
defining cultural property is never simply a matter of objects; it is a matter
of objects in relation with concrete social identities.
[19] J. Llull Peñalba, Evolución del concepto y de la significación social del
patrimonio cultural, Arte, Individuo y
Sociedad 2005, 177, 180.
[20] A.K. Briggs, Consequences of the Met-Italy Accord for the International Restitution
of Cultural Property, 7 Chicago Journal
of International Law 623, 627 (2007).
[21] I. Lilley, Strangers and Brothers ? Heritage, Human Rights, and
Cosmopolitan Archaeology in Oceania, in:
Cosmopolitan Archaeologies (L.
Meskell, ed.), Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009, 48.
[22] T. Todorov, La littérature en péril,
Paris 2007, p. 44.
[23] B. Groys, Logik der Sammlung. Am Ende des
musealen Zeitalters, München-Wien 1997, p. 154: „Das Museum ist eine
Maschine, die aus der Nichtkunst Kunst macht“:
[24] G. Makridakis’ interview [in greek],
17.04.2011, www.freesunday.gr
[25] C.N. Cipolla, Signs of identity, signs of memory, Archaeological Dialogues 2008, 196, 198.
[26] E. Agazzi/V. Fortunati, Introduzione, in: Memoria e saperi. Percorsi transdisciplinari
(a cura di E. Agazzi e V. Fortunati), Roma 2007, 9.
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