Töff Beine (they/them) graduated with their thesis on "Colonial Legacies in anthropological collections in Germany" in MA Empowerment Studies from University of applied science Düsseldorf in 2022. Currently they teach German language at the Goethe Zentrum, Kathmandu.
As we identified in various stages during our “Heritage as Place-Making” Spring School in Jyapu Samaj (Patan), the term heritage is not easy to grasp. Attempts to define often perceive heritage as something that materializes in the world we can touch or experience; something that is frequently institutionalized; something that should be preserved for the future; something that is passed on to our generation by the past and by our ancestors. Through this lens, heritage appears as something precious and endangered. That might be true as well in some cases.
Mural in Kaalo.101 by Sazeed Shakya, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
With this in mind, I really appreciate and want to highlight the work of the artist Sazeed Shakya, who creates paintings and murals to raise awareness on the spiritual, cultural but also infrastructural meaning of Hiti, ancient water sprouts, found everywhere around Newar towns of Kathmandu Valley. The importance and preciousness of Hiti as heritage, as culture that is passed on, was part of our Spring School as well, for example in the public talk of P. S. Joshi and our city tour around Basantapur by Monalisa Maharjan.
Heritage lives through people. It gives meaning to our lives as it connects us to the past, supports us navigating through the present and helps us imagining a future. If we understand heritage in this very large and broad sense, we are already born with our own individual and collectively heritage. On one side, heritage surrounds us, materialized in forms of architecture, literature, arts, history, social structures and more. On another level, a very personal one, heritage is transmitted through our families and communities, basically inscribed in our bodies. There is vast research on generational trauma which continues to be passed on from generation to generation, often unconsciously and unintended. I propose to look at multigenerational trauma as some kind of heritage, as it is basically an embodied experience that is passed on.
Heritage therefore becomes something that organically continues and connects people, as we are not isolated from our past or our surrounding. In general, people are relational. In present times heritage discourse, there is often a perspective of lack and scarcity and an objective to seek to include more and more histories, traditions, cultural practices and identities. Through raising awareness around the heritage of diverse communities, heritage discourse tries to challenge social stratification along structures of power and oppression. I think there is a great need in diversifying mainstream heritage and pointing out the conditions of power and oppression under which heritage is (re)produced and maintained.
In addition to this, I want to emphasize on heritages’ potential of resistance. Even if mainstream heritage safeguarding ignores and makes specific heritages, archives, histories and cultural practices invisible, sabotages them or tries to erase them. To remember is an act of revolt and sometimes it is basically surviving. Queer and trans communities do have preserved knowledge and cultural practices which have been transmitted over centuries. There is queer and trans history. Because of the dominant narrative (and especially how funding works within the heritage and cultural sector), a very common description nowadays fosters the image of a need to create queer and trans histories (which often means putting it into a manageable, written or recorded manner, so it can be archived, heritage-ized, maybe safeguarded). This notion is arrogant and ignorant, as it does not recognize heritages and archives that do not follow the dominant parameters. A concrete example of queer and trans heritage is the circulation of knowledge, experiences and methods around binding, packing, gender transforming medication or surgeries.
Mural in Pulchowk by Machaa, 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The need and wish of safeguarding and preserving heritage implies the notion of heritage to be positive, naturally aspired and precious. Something to keep dear and treasured. Continuing the line of thought, that heritage is already within and around us and connecting it to the aspect that we are still living in a world where structures of power and oppression divide us: even if the local and regional features of power structures differ, patriarchy, hetero-/cis-normativity, racism, antisemitism, adultism, ageism, ableism, fascism, capitalism, for example are passed on to each and every one of us through heritage.
Against this assumption, I want to turn the question around: Instead of asking “What keeps heritage alive?” let us ask: “How do we get rid of certain heritages?” How can we heal – personally and collectively - from violent heritage? As a white German with a nazi- and colonial background in my personal family biography as well as in the history of the society that surrounded me, heritage always tasted bitter (not even bittersweet) and did never create any urge to be preserved or carried on for me personally. Rather I always tried to distance myself very rigidly. This distance creates a disturbing dissonance, because I cannot run away from what has been transmitted to me through values, histories, folklore, movies, monuments, behavioral patterns and cultural practices.
Tsepo Bollwinkel, a Black non-binary historian, once highlighted that we cannot overcome white supremacy by imagining ourselves as the better anti-racist and not investigating where we come from. Approaching the world with an assumption, that people are generally okay and that we have to understand the conditions under which our ancestors operated, can actually enable us in the present to heal wounds that not only haunt the affected people but the oppressors and perpetrator as well. Processing violent heritage, heritage of colonialism, war, rape, looting, eviction, for example might open up a window of possibilities: where we actually might be able to break the circle of (often unconsciously and unintentionally) passing on violent heritage to the future.
I want to quote one of my dear fellows from the HaP Spring School, Shaheera. In her thought-provoking reflection at the end of our Seminar, she called upon developing a perception of oneself as an active heritage transmitter or maker. I think that is very powerful. Is there space for creative encounters with heritage, old traditions and practices? Can we make space for actual people with their very unique identities who do not fit into linear and exclusive narrated heritage scripts?
Entrance courtyard Kaalo.101. Photo courtesy of the author.
These questions might seem complex and abstract. But there are examples who operate already in such a way. For the time of our Spring School and even beyond, I was able to live in one art house project called Kaalo.101 which I want to mention here and share some Fotos. Kaalo.101 exists since 2016 as a community, arts and house project. It aims to create a braver space, a space of possibility where artists, activists and cultural managers investigate, work, develop and produce precisely at the intersections between traditions, cultural heritage, counter culture, futurism, politics and critique of power. Approaches like this refuse to “nation-alize and tradition-alize” conception of culture and heritage, as Stuart Hall identifies one of the great dangers inherent to heritage discourses. Apart from radical political intentions, Kaalo.101 creates a space of identification, conversations, conflict, friction, disruptions, agency, community, history, heritage and also future.
References
Bollwinkel, Tsepo (2015): Ancestral Lineage Healing. https://tsepo-bollwinkel-empowerment.de/
Hall, Stuart (2007): Whose Heritage? Un-settling “The Heritage”, Re-imagining the post-Nation.
Kaalo.101 (2024): About us. https://kaalo101.org/
