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Concrete matters: Ruins of modernity and the things called heritage

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Article

Concrete matters: Ruinsof modernity and thethings called heritage

ora PetursdottirDepartment of Archaeology and Social Anthropology,University of Troms, Norway

Abstract

Intangibility has become a trendy term within heritage studies and is now evenconsidered to refer to heritage in general. This article discusses this development,along with its integrity and consequences for the fate of things in the heritage discourse.

With reference to the concrete ruins of Icelands recent past it addresses the traditionaland contemporary processes of discrimination and othering within heritage definitions,and the often fragile dialectic between heritage and waste. With a foothold in these veryconcrete and tangible remains the article questions the emerging claim that all heritageis intangible and suggests that a broader heritage conception, and a true concern forthe very tangible qualities of things, may bring us closer to a comprehension of the(heritage) value of these modern ruins.

Keywords

Gelassenheit, heritage, heritage value, intangible heritage, modern ruins, ruination,thingness

Ruin memory

They have destroyed the factory! It is not the same it has lost its charm now. These

were the words of a frustrated photographer I met in Strandir, in Icelands Westfjords,

while working on my project on herring factories in the area last summer. I instantly

knew what he was referring to. One of the two decaying and roughly half a century old

Corresponding author:

ora Petursdottir, University of Troms, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, Breiviklia,

9037 Troms, Norway.

Email: [email protected]

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herring rendering factories I was working on had been painted white earlier in

the summer. Abandoned in the 1950s the factory had been left to ruination until

bought, along with most of its adjacent buildings, by its present day owners in the

1980s. Soon after they had restored and opened a small hotel in one of the old

buildings where they have since served a constantly growing number of tourists

making their way to this beautiful but remote region every summer. The restoration

of the factory itself, however, a colossal degrading concrete structure, was for long,

and still is really, beyond their capacity. Nevertheless, step by step, replacing broken

windows, roof tiles and gutters, stopping leakage and infilling frost cracks the build-

ings constant aging and decay has, to some extent, been tamed. This has made it

possible for the hotel managers to exploit the lure the old factory has on visitors,

inviting guests on guided tours along the processing line, creating a small herring

history exhibition in the engine hall, and throwing art exhibitions and concerts in

the many wonderfully lit and acoustic spaces it provides (Figure 1). The latest amend-

ment in this process was the painting of the factory, turning its outer appearance from

concrete grey to glistering white. It is not for this that I have travelled all this way!,

the photographer announced, and although I sympathized with the owners intentions

and effort, genuinely caring for this abandoned building, I understood his frustration.

I too knew the factory before its face-lift and realized the enormous transformation

caused by this white makeup.

Introduction

The latest theoretical twirl in the humanities and social sciences has been articu-

lated as a new concern with matter, materiality or a turn towards things.1 As

stated by historian Frank Trentmann, Things are back. After the turn to discourse

and signs in the late 20th century, there is a new fascination with the material stuff

of life (2009: 283). Interestingly, the contemporary development within heritage

studies, to some extent at least, has been characterized by an opposite turn. Here

intangibility seems to have become an equally attractive catchword. While firstentering the heritage toolkit in order to accommodate other, often non-western,

aspects of heritage than monuments and objects, the concept of intangible heritage

is now even seen as representing . . . a radical paradigm shift from the objective

nature of material culture to the subjective experience of the human being

(Ruggles and Silverman, 2009: 11). Thus, intangibility is, by some scholars,

argued to describe the essence of heritage in general. [A]ll heritage is intangible,

it is stated (Smith, 2006: 3; see also Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 16), and, further-

more, there is, really, no such thingas heritage (Smith, 2006: 11, my emphasis; see

also e.g. Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 10). Though it may truly be debated to whatextent the current turn towards things in the humanities and social sciences

involves a sincere concern with the things themselves (see Ingold, 2007; Olsen,

2010), the call for a reverse or opposite turn within heritage studies is worthy of

a closer look.

32 Journal of Social Archaeology 13(1)



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The critique uttered by advocates of intangible heritage is that monuments,

physical objects or material culture have dominated heritage definitions and in

effect excluded other possible perspectives or ways to understand heritage. That

in itself may be a legitimate and understandable critique. But where does it lead us

to claim that all heritage is intangible, that there are no such things as heritage?And, can it really be claimed to account for a paradigm shift in heritage studies or

management? Moreover, where does it leave things, in heritage, to deny them their

tangibility or thingness? And where does it leave heritage to ignore things role, or

to assign them innocence, in the discourse and construction of heritage concep-

tions? In this article I discuss these questions as well as possible consequences of

this development.

My discussion will seek concreteness in a case study: on-going research focusing

on ruins of modernity in Icelands northwest, specifically the concrete ruins of

herring factories that were constructed and abandoned during the first half ofthe twentieth century. The factories emerged due to the advent of industrialized

herring fishing, known as the herring adventure (sldarvintyri) in Icelandic

public and historical discourses. It is an adventure, furthermore, generally referred

to as one of the most significant elements in the nations modernization process,

independence and economic viability during the first half of the twentieth century.

Despite their historical significance, however, the herring factories themselves have

been more or less ignored as heritage. Because of their young age, or immaturity,

and their corroding and rotting state, they find themselves caught up somewhere

between disposal and history. They linger on as more or less worthless matter outof place in the Icelandic ideological heritage landscape of myth and Sagas and

thus create an ideal context for reflection on the fate of things in the heritage

discourse. As I argue, the durability and weight of their concrete carcasses exceeds

a mere intangible reflection. Through their very presence, and the presence-effects

Figure 1. From waste to heritage? Herring history exhibition in the engine hall of Dju pavk

herring factory (Photo: ora Petursdottir).

Petursdottir 33



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(Gumbrecht, 2004) they provoke, they can be said to utter their own critique of

conventional heritage conceptions and urge us to critically consider the significance

of the concrete and tangible in relation to heritage value, and of ruination as not

only a negative but also a generative process (cf. DeSilvey, 2006; Shanks, 1998).

Intangible heritage heritage contra things?

The historical scope of heritage and heritage practices is frequently traced back to

the official acts of monument and heritage protection in the nineteenth century, or

slightly earlier, and the associated programs of nationalism, romanticism and

historicism thought to have triggered these early initiatives. Others see no need

to go further back than to the global approaches to heritage appearing in the latter

half of the twentieth century. As argued by David C. Harvey, however, these recentdates of origin may be seen as representing particular strands in the history of

heritage, or heritageisation, which should be understood . . . as a process or a

human condition rather than a single movement or a personal project (2001:

320) with a datable genesis.

Definitions of the heritage concept have been many and varied, while the con-

ceptions of inheritance and bequest have been central to many of them. UNESCOs

definition of heritage claims that heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live

with today, and what we pass on to future generations (UNESCO, n.d.). This

emphasis on inheritance and possession (Rowlands, 2002a, 2002b), and the conse-quential conception of heritage as a physical thing or property crystallized also in

the concept of cultural resourcemanagement has been increasingly criticized by

heritage scholars, of which Harveys (2001) suggestion of heritageisation and

heritage as a process is an example. This criticism is maybe most explicitly

voiced in the work of Laurajane Smith, especially in her research on the heritage

canon and the dominant or authorized heritage discourse (AHD) manifested in it

(2006; see also Smith and Waterton, 2009a, 2009b; Waterton and Smith, 2009b).

According to Smith, this dominant discourse has acted to normalize or naturalize

our conception of heritage, how it is defined, and who is authorized to do so.Heritage is here reduced to an authentic physical artefact or site, aesthetically

pleasing and monumental, confined to a distant past rather than present processes,

and reflecting and promoting certain western-elite cultural conceptions and values.

Moreover, Smith argues, heritage sites or objects have, through this dominant and

materially focused discourse, been attributed an inherent valueor significance. The

material object or site has . . . come to stand in for the social and cultural values it

symbolizes and hence the authorized conception is that . . . heritage is the monu-

ment, archaeological site or other material thing or place, rather than cultural

values or meanings (Waterton and Smith, 2009b: 14, original emphasis). As aconsequence, heritage has commonly been understood from the perspective of

shortage or loss: a scarce and non-renewable resource (for criticism of this see

e.g. Brattli, 2006, 2009), the authenticity and sustainability of which has to be

secured through management, legal protection and conservation.




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Arguing against this tradition, Smith . . . starts from the premise that all heri-

tage is intangible (2006: 3). She underlines that this is not to dismiss the tangible

aspect of heritage but rather to refute its natural presumption; while tangible

objects or sites may be identified as heritage, they . . .

are not inherently valuable,

nor do they carry a freight of innate meaning. Stonehenge, for instance, is basically

a collection of rocks in a field (Smith, 2006: 3, original emphasis; see Solli, 2011,

for criticism). Heritage should rather be understood as a mentality, an experience,

or an act of remembering that engages with the present, and where . . . the sites

themselves arecultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vitalfor, this

process (Smith, 2006: 44, my emphasis). In other words, heritage is a process where

things or sites may be engaged in the representation or manifestation of amorphous

social values, but are themselves by no means imperative to that process.

Therefore, as Smith (2006) proclaims, all heritage can be claimed to be intangible.UNESCOs adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible

Cultural Heritage in 2003 was a response to criticism of this nature.2 UNESCOs

universal definition of heritage and heritage value was accused of privileging west-

ern, and predominantly material, conceptions of heritage while excluding other,

non-western and often intangible, conceptions. In the 2003 convention, intangible

cultural heritage is thus defined as . . . the practices, representations, expressions,

knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces

associated therewith that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals

recognize as part of their cultural heritage (UNESCO, 2003). This intangible heri-tage is, furthermore, described as manifested in, for example, language or other

oral tradition, craftsmanship, rituals and other social practices that provide groups

of people with a sense of identity and belonging (UNESCO, 2003).

The convention does not, therefore, counterpose intangible to tangible heritage,

but underlines the interdependence of the two (see e.g. Bouchenaki, 2003) that

valuing or safeguarding one will come with and urge the appreciation of the other.

Nevertheless, as described above, the intangible heritage discourse tends to imply a

hierarchy in the sense that meaning is inevitably seen as subjective and humanly

derived. It thus involves an underlying conception of anthropocentrism, whichreflects limited, if any, concern for the qualities, significance or affordances of

things themselves in their construction as heritage.

The introduction of intangible heritage has also been legitimized or rationalized

as a means to negotiate and level supposed asymmetrical power relations on the

heritage arena, reducing the authority of top-down policies and increasing the

influence of various interest groups and local populations. Moreover, it is, accord-

ing to Smith and Waterton (2009a), not least the privileged position of archaeology

within the AHD and heritage policy development that roots the material bias in

dominant heritage conceptions. Because of their own interests, archaeologists tendto promote and protect what they see as their own database, which in effect has

sustained a material understanding of heritage. In their edited volume with the

telling titleTaking Archaeology out of Heritage, Waterton and Smith (2009a) there-

fore suggest that archaeology is (experimentally) removed from heritage

Petursdottir 35



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conceptions, in order to de-emphasize materiality and give room to other possible

understandings (Smith and Waterton, 2009a: 2).

Archaeology is of course the discipline of things. It is therefore not surprising

that archaeology became the scapegoat for advocates of a fundamentally intangible

heritage definition. This critique, however, appears less reasonable when seen in the

light of the development within archaeology and archaeological theory through the

1980s and 1990s, when focus was on subjective and intangible values, ideological

and symbolic meanings, and where the things themselves were often reduced to

tools in social interaction. Moreover, archaeological data, fragmented, incomplete

and sparse as it often is, is not by definition welcomed as heritage. Heritage has its

own regime of cultural valuing and othering and leaves a large portion of the

archaeological record by the wayside (cf. Watson, 2009: 45). It should therefore

not be entirely baffling, nor without reason, that archaeologists endeavor to pro-mote their largely undesired heritage, if not for other purposes than to challenge

normative heritage conceptions of the grand or aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, as

a discipline located in between the opposed divides of the modern regime a

discipline that embraces human-thing and material-culture relations archaeology

is in a unique position to address the relation/opposition between tangible and

intangible heritage, not only in discourse but also by exposing the common

grounds underneath this very rupture/relation (cf. Webmoor and Witmore, 2008).

The material bias and the source of heritage value

Leafing through heritage conventions, policies and legislations, there is truly an

emphasis on the physical or tangible aspect of heritage. UNESCOs Convention

Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) defines

cultural heritage asmonuments,groups of buildings and sites. The current Icelandic

law on national heritage is more or less concurrent with this, stressing the protec-

tion of sites, structures and artefacts of culture-historical significance (Lo g um

menningarminjar, 2013[2012]). However, if we look at the rationale for the man-

agement and protection of this tangible heritage, globally or nationally, it is clearthat concern does not generally lie with materiality or the things themselves.

Despite claims of the opposite, the source of value in this traditional heritage

discourse, just like in the intangible heritage discourse, is rarely found within

things or sites but is based on human perception, experience and attachment,

and percolated through conceptions of history, identity and sense of belonging.

The same intangible focus is in fact apparent in the general archaeological codes of

ethics, such as those implemented by the Society for American Archaeology, the

World Archaeological Congress and the European Association of Archaeologists,

where emphasis is consistently on cultural heritage as a concern for people, for theirrights to a history and identity (Hamilakis, 2007; Scarre and Scarre, 2006), and

more generally as a scientific, socio-political or economic resource. None of the

codes, and hardly any of the academic texts concerning ethics in archaeology,

articulate this responsibility as an ethical concern in relation to the things




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themselves they are simply the means or cultural tools (cf. Smith, 2006: 44)

employed to reach a moral end.

Hence, while sympathizing with the critique that initially led to the introduction

of intangible heritage, I question the novelty, and the gain, of the assertion that all

heritage is intangible. It hardly accounts for a paradigm shift in conceptions of

heritage value, but rather makes explicit, and reinforces, what has always been the

underlying, yet rarely specifically uttered, rationale of heritage discourses: that,

although there may at times be room for a relational value where value may

spring from the encounter of mind and matter sole things, qua things, have never

really been considered the sources of this value. It might rather be claimed that

heritage definitions generally suffer from being under-materialized, reducing things

to epiphenomena of supposedly intangible cultural and social processes.

To recall UNESCOs definition of heritage, it is . . .

our legacy from the past,what we live with today, and what we pass onto future generations (my emphasis).

While a rather acceptable definition, the rarely considered reality is that things or

heritage is passed on to the future whether welike it or not, whether we manage it

or not. Moreover, despite that things life expectancy and maturity with age varies

greatly, their aging is nevertheless characterized by a certain egalitarianism; that is,

due to their material persistency there is survival also of the unwanted, outmoded

or discarded (Olsen, 2010: 166167). The undesired debris of the past, thus, is

continuously accumulating around us (Lowenthal, 1998: xvi), and the majority

of it will, furthermore, remain just that spoils of history.The category of heritage cannot, it may be argued, proliferate infinitely.

However, such commonsense rationale may conceal the effective regimes of valuing

involved and the fact that some things simply do not fulfil the requirements needed

for such a promotion. Despite claims of the opposite, it has really never been

enough for things or sites to simply be in order to become regarded as heritage,

and this is especially true for ruins of the modern. Things have to be in a very

specific way; in fact, badheritage comes close to a conceptual contradiction. The

heritage ruin is preferably pleasing and attractive, carefully selected to suit our

needs and expectations. Properly old, ready-ruined, sanitary and trouble-free, itprovides visitors with a disciplined and purified space without extraneous mater-

ials, plants, fauna, debris and modern intrusions (Edensor, 2005a, 2005b).

Seemingly frozen in time, further decay is staved off through restoration and pres-

ervation, since the urge to arrest decay, of course, has always been the imperative of

modern museums and heritage management.

If we look at the rationale behind this specific heritage management of things it is

again questionable whether it really is the things or sites themselves, and their mater-

ial integrity or thingness, that is being cared for. Or is it rather so that they are kept

in a manner presentable to us, for us, and our own well being? Here I agree withSmith that, as it is generally understood, . . . heritage is heritage because it is sub-

jected to the management and preservation/conservation process, not because it

simply is (2006: 3). In other words, promotion to heritage is a constitutive process

where things are made into heritage (Smith, 2006; see also Carman, 2010) rather than

Petursdottir 37



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preserved as such. Unlike Smith and others, however, I cannot see this conservation

ethics as a sign of a general material fervour or a physically founded value concep-

tion. Rather, I see it as a sign of a very specific material intolerance, one quite obvi-

ously based on specific aesthetical values for example, as expressed in the urge to

separate heritage from waste, and proper ruins from mere spoils of history.

Histories of significance and spoils of history a case from

the Icelandic herring saga

The two herring factories in the Strandir region, on the east coast of the Westfjord

peninsula, are only two examples of a common phenomenon in Icelandic land-

scapes modern3 ruins, including derelict industrial ventures, deserted farms and

half abandoned rural settlements. The twentieth century as the age of extremes(Hobsbawm, 1994) may serve as a trope when describing the Icelandic context,

where social and economic conditions were radically and rapidly transformed

during the course of the century. This transformation is evident in the patterns

of settlement and the increasingly sharp contrast between the urbanized capital

area and the rural rest. Today 90 per cent of the countrys population of 320,000

live in towns or villages, and 60 per cent live in the Reykjavk (capital) area alone.

In 1910, however, 85 per cent of the population lived in rural districts, on farms

mainly, while only 15 per cent resided in Reykjavk (Snvarr, 1993: 118121;

Statistics Iceland, n.d.). Most people, moreover, lived in traditional turf andstone houses, constituting 52 per cent of all buildings in the country at the time,

and still amounting to 27 per cent in 1930 (Kjartansson, 2002: 202).

Obviously, many factors made possible this swift development, but an important

trigger was the herring adventure and the rapid development of industrialized

fishing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Jo nsson, 1980, 2004;

Sigursson et al., 2007). Growing exploitation of the abundant maritime resources

now triggered an increase in urbanization and the establishment of several landing

and processing stations along the coast (see Ragnarsson, 2007). Some of these were

satellite settlements located in remote and previously sparsely or unsettled areaswhere proximity to the resource was a first priority. Hence, places previously mar-

ginal and out of reach suddenly became centres in complex economic networks of

production. With time some of these communities grew strong, while others awaited

a more gloomy fate. Due to technological advancement in terms of transport, pro-

cessing and preservation, their strategic, marginal location was no longer essential

and even proved economically unfeasible. Furthermore, although debated, years of

excessive exploitation did most likely also decimate the herring stock (Karlsdo ttir,

2005), causing seasons of catch failure. As the herring dissapeared, so the economic

basis of many small and newly established communities was impaired.Two such settlements, which came and went with the herring, are the two sites in

Strandir region referred to in the recollection at the beginning of this article:

Djupavk in Reykjafjo rur and Eyri in Ingo lfsfjo rur (Figure 2). The factory in

Djupavk, completed in 1935, was at the time the largest concrete building in the




10/24

country, equipped with the most advanced and up-to-date machinery of the day and,

according to some, the most advanced in all of Europe (Matthasson, 1973). In the

years that followed, Djupavk became a place filled with life and a focal point in a

prosperous industrial network. Along with the growing industry, the small commu-

nity also expanded houses were built, along with other dwellings, a shop, a bakery,

piers and so on (Jo hannesson, 2001; Matthasson, 1973). A similar development

took place at Eyri, with the construction of a competing large scale and highly

mechanized herring factory in 1944 (Figure 3). As in Djupavk, this industrial enter-

prise initiated the formation of a small, and partly seasonal, community at the site,

with dwellings, offices, garages, a shop, a bakery and so on (Jo hannesson, 2001;

Matthasson, 1973). During the 1940s and early 1950s the herring stock diminished

considerably along the Westfjord peninsula and the reason for the two industrial

powers in Strandir was gradually eradicated. After a short working life, the enginesat Eyri and Djupavk were, thus, finally silenced in 1952 and 1954 respectively

(Jo hannesson, 2001; Matthasson, 1973). When abandoned, the factories, engines,

dwellings, shops, bakeries, beds, chairs, food supplies and spare parts were left

behind, in hope of return (Figure 4) a wish, however, never fulfilled. Once again,

these sites were rendered peripheral and out of reach.

Today, 60 years after their official abandonment, the deserted herring stations

seem completely at odds with both official and general understandings of cultural

heritage. Unlike the traditional romanticized ruin that so effortlessly acquires our

Figure 2. Location of the two herring factories in Djupavk and Eyri, Strandir region on the

Westfjord peninsula (Map: Oscar Aldred).

Petursdottir 39



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appreciation, these modern concrete installations stand in sharp contrast to the

peripheral landscapes in which they obtrude in as well as to our preferred percep-

tion of those landscapes as pristine, natural landscapes beyond anything but

authentic, traditional human impact (Figure 3). And, despite literally materializ-

ing what is believed to have brought modernism to the shores of this island, the

uncanny remains of the deserted herring stations now contradict our general

Figure 3. Industrial ruins in pristine landscapes: Eyri herring factory, seen from the west with

the towering mountains behind it (Photo: ora Petursdottir).

Figure 4. Abandoned figurines: oil centrifuging machines in the engine hall, Eyri (Photo:

Bjrnar Olsen).




12/24

conception of modernity (Latour, 1993) they have become matter out of place

and order. Left mostly, or partly in the case of Djupavk, to non-human inter-

actions and preferences, the sites have developed disturbing mixtures and combin-

ations (Figure 5). Walls and concrete have decomposed; nature has intruded,

mingled and reclaimed. The previous clear distinction between the man-made

and the natural surroundings has evaporated as material debris disperses into

the surrounding landscape while nature trespasses the concrete boundaries of the

sites, creating . . . manifestations of threatening otherness in a [yet] familiar

space . . . (Edensor, 2005b: 313).

Icelandic heritage law defines (and automatically protects) archaeological heri-

tage as well as houses and standing structures over 100 years old (Lo g um men-

ningarminjar, 2013[2012])4 while later remains may be specially protected.

Although this is rather unusual and liberal in European terms, the concern withrelatively recent heritage has been motivated primarily in order to protect and

conserve surviving expressions of traditional culture. As mentioned earlier, the

majority of vernacular architecture in Iceland remained turf and/or stone structures

until as late as 1920 (Kjartansson, 2002: 202) and emphasis has been on protecting

this category of late traditional style housing. Thus, the reason for this somewhat

peculiar age criterion can be seen as a means to discriminate between traditional/

authentic and modern remains, between heritage and waste.

In other words, the many modern ruins littering Icelandic landscapes generally

lack special protection and thus an official declaration of cultural or heritage value.

Figure 5. Things entangled: floor deposit in the female workers dormitory, Eyri (Photo: ora

Petursdottir).

Petursdottir 41



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Curiously, though, through the rapid growth of tourism during recent decades,

modern ruins, like the herring factories in Djupavk and Eyri, seem to have become

somewhat popular destinations among travelers seeking to move beyond the con-

ventional tourist routes and onto the dusty sideways adding a hint of irony to

their neglected state. In the case of Djupavk, this lure of the ruin has also been

taken advantage of, as described at the beginning of this article. However, since this

has involved interference, although on a very small scale, with the factorys ruinous

state, it has stirred skeptical and sometimes hostile reactions among some of its

admirers reactions that provoke thoughts on the value of these concrete ruins.

Of course, people may have different ideas about their value; they may see the

factories as sites of remembrance, as monuments to workers life and struggles, as

testimonies to a century of capitalist-driven politics, or just as symbols of a time

gone by all of which could correspond to a conventional conception of heritagevalue. However, before suggesting that modern ruins, like Icelands crumbling

herring factories, are incorporated into a category of heritage and thus enrolled

in conventional heritage management processes, it is maybe worth asking whether

something of their character, something of their lure and value, might be lost in

that process. In other words, maybe we should also consider the possibility that the

ruins themselves, in their dynamic state of being, may be the source of their own

value and significance.

Letting things be: Heritage beyond anthropocentrism

They have destroyed the factory!, the photographer announced in my recollection

at the beginning of this article. Truly an interesting opinion considering the general

state of the factory, both before and after this very limited amendment to its

genuinely disintegrating appearance. And no less, when considering the intent of

the hotel managers and owners; in their mind, this was of course one step towards

preventing its destruction. Out of concern for the factory itself and its conservation

but mostly because of its historical significance for present and future visitors

mending and maintaining this concrete carcass, and painting it white, was to themthe way to honour its legacy and preserve its value. These are quite clearly two very

different perceptions of the site and its value. On the one hand it is believed to

reside in the past, in the sites history and former glory, and is thus best secured by

preventing decay and maintaining a clear link to its former use value. On the other

hand the site is valued in its present state, in decay, which importantly, however,

does not contest an acknowledgement of its historical value. Whereas the former

stance resembles the conventional conception of what heritage is all about, saving

things from loss, the latter seems to reflect the opposite, an attitude where value

also resides in the ruin itself, in its concrete presence and the fact that it is notarrested but dynamic, confusing and constantly becoming. An attitude where ruin-

ation, or a things natural aging (Van de Wetering, 1996), is not seen as the

incarnation of loss but as a generative process that is part of its messy biography

(Ouzman, 2006).




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But valuing ruination and decay how is that heritage management? And how

can that possibly tone with the current ethics of heritage and conservation? Well,

the answer is simple: it does not. While heritage scholars have repeatedly encour-

aged an understanding of heritage as process, that conception has never included

the tangible aspect of heritage. The traditional idea is that as things or sites become

heritage they should, by means of management and conservation, be rescued from

any material processes natural to them and turned into frozen facts, into stable

points of departure around which processes of intangible value prescription may

evolve. In other words, things are made manageable restrained, controlled and

kept from revealing themselves to us in their true being.

But maybe there is room for a different kind of heritage conception, one that is

open to the life of things, materiality as dynamic, and thus also to the tangible

forces involved in any intangible process of heritageisation (Harvey, 2001). Aheritage conception that might, at times, see an ethical stance involved in letting

things be, as Lucas Introna (2009) puts it with reference to Heideggers (1966)

concept of Gelassenheit or releasement. Not a conventional ethical stance, but

one extended to things themselves,5 where we might consider the possibility of

granting things certain rights, as suggested by Ouzman (2006: 275). Not only

rights to be managed, conserved or curated (2006: 275), which in essence may

have more to do with our well-being than that of things, but a right also to be

released from the drudgery of such human utilitarian relations without that

rendering them value- or meaningless. And, is it not possible that valuing ruinsas ruins, or occasionally presenting museum objects in their decay, might add to

our understanding of things, their temporality and being (Ouzman, 2006: 270)?

In relation to his discussion of the concept of Gelassenheit, or releasement,

Heidegger distinguishes between calculative and meditative thinking (1966: 46),

where the former is a way of wilful thinking that already expects an outcome,

whereas the latter is released from the chains of prospects, or willing, and instead

awaits that which may come towards it (1966: 47). In other words, it is an aware-

ness, an attitude, that is open to the mystery of its surrounding, and thus open to

the possibility of releasement. Rather than a distinct phenomenon, Gelassenheitshould therefore be understood as a process, an experience or a movement towards

the unexpected, the thing itself in its native mysterious being a releasement

towards things (1966: 54). Importantly, this Gelassenheit, to let be, is not a sug-

gestion of a passive or indifferent attitude but rather an active but non-intrusive

acceptance of things in their remote otherness. It is a different way of valuing the

world, thus, that does not precondition its management or domestication.

The ethics of heritage, the ethics of conservation, have never really been an

ethics of things or materiality. Of course, modern ethical discourse is traditionally

founded on a clear ontological distinction between nature and culture, betweennatural laws and social contracts (Poole, 1991), between people and things. And the

drive of modern ethics is to secure the integrity of the subject, to defend it by all

means possible from the fate of objectification; ethics, thus, is traditionally about

people and not things, and the ethics of heritage are no different. To extend ethics

Petursdottir 43



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to things may therefore in a conventional understanding imply the humanist

impossibility of equating people with things. This, however, is not the case. It is

not a claim to do away with the differencebetween people and things, but rather a

plea for a middle ground where it is possible to appreciate both in their difference;

where the valuation of things does not have to take place through their domesti-

cation or the abolition of their thingness by transforming them into humanized

things but is possible also through an appreciation of things in their otherness, for

example in ruination.

As already noted, bad heritage comes close to a conceptual contradiction and

discussing the rights of things not only raises questions of how to value things in

ruins but also the question of bad things, and whether or not we should extend

such ethical concerns to technologies of terror, polluted industrial wastelands or

memorials of drained natural resources indeed, to ruins of modernity. Ethics,however, are not necessarily about good, bad or evil, because the ethical measure is

not . . . an abstract principle or value, but reality itself, its concreteness, the gravity

of things (Benso, 1996: 134). The moral move is rather to take things seriously. An

ethics extended to things is moreover significant on two levels: firstly, in terms of

acknowledging things own affordances and their right to be, which also includes

the right to be released from us, our management and conceptualization, without

that rendering them devoid of meaning or value. Things may of course embody or

symbolize, but in the end it is the thing itself that presents; it . . . stands in the

relationship of immediacy, not of mediation (Armstrong, 1971: 26, my emphasis)and its ultimate frame of reference is its concrete presence the thing itself. This

presence-effect (Gumbrecht, 2004) is thus not restricted to our conception or

interpretation, but is inherent to the thing itself and its (alter)native and dynamic

being its thingness. It is a meaningful presence that is prior to logic and concep-

tualization and is therefore not necessarily salvaged through our interference or

management, but may in fact be drained or lost in that very process.

Secondly, an ethics extended to things is significant in terms of acknowledging

the moral obligations that come with things rights. As relational entities, in a

society of monsters (Law, 1991), things are never innocent beings, they arenever just there as simple means towards our ends. In our society of hybrids we

constantly enrol things and charge them with our values and meanings to give them

substance, weight and durability. These inscriptions are successful because things

outlive us, and . . . those that encounter and use these inscribed things may become,

wittingly or unwittingly, enrolled into particular programmes, or scripts for action

(Introna, 2009: 400401). Things should, therefore, rather be thought of as polit-

ical locations (Introna, 2009), charged with values, that may be negotiated or even

ignored, but are also, because of their thingly qualities, their weight and durability,

somewhat involuntarily re-membered into ever new presents and ever new contexts.We need to be aware of this power of things. That is, we should not rule out the

possibility that sometimes . . . we find what was meant to be found . . . (Gonza lez-

Ruibal, 2011: 63), that Stonehenge isnt simply any collection of rocks, that some

things actuallyare heritage or at least through their physiognomic difference and




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17/24


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Interpretation in archaeology has almost without exception been driven by the

inclination to dig deeper, as the immediate, what meets the eye, is not enough; it is a

mere material expression of the more important and genuine social and symbolic

meanings that reside behind it. This also relates, and not without a certain irony, to

Laurajane Smiths claim that all heritage is intangible, that Stonhenge is meaning-

less and devoid of value unless contextualized through contemporary social pro-

cesses. Conversely though, it is not her statement that Stonehenge . . . is basically a

collection of rocks in a field (2006: 3) that is problematic; that is in fact exactly

what Stonehenge is. The problem, however, is to see that as meaningless. What

characterizes the intangible heritage discourse (or even heritage discourses in gen-

eral), as well as much of interpretive archaeology, is not only that meaning, value

and significance are seen as inevitably subjective, but also that meaning is confused

with or restricted, rather, to symbolical or other modes of derivative meanings(Olsen, 2012: 223) that meaning beyond intellectualization is always meaningless.

But is it so that Stonehenge itself, in its simple stoniness (Solli, 2011), brings

nothing of value to the encounters with the subjective experiences that for centuries

have circulated around it?

Of course things may be contextualized and made meaningful in all kinds of

ways. Importantly, however, the ruins themselves should not be seen as simple

cultural tools or symbols in that process but also as sources of value and signifi-

cance. They are actively part of the process through their affecting presence, in the

form of an immediacy that cannot be reduced to mediation or transmission(Armstrong, 1971: 26). Therefore we should also be aware of the possibility that

a heritage domestication or normalization may quite literally drain things of their

meaning subjecting them to sameness, to frozen and manicured heritage, easily

brings their own critical antiphonal voices to silence. Caring for and respecting the

integrity of things may occasionally, as in the case of the whitewashed factory, also

be to let things be in difference, in their otherness, without that being regarded as

an attitude of indifference. It is possible that our recent persistent efforts to make

our silent objects speak in order to make them meaningful have made us forget

the simple fact that they actually dont. And without at all denying the significanceof materially conveyed meanings, an ethics extended to things may in its simplest

form be described as an effort to occasionally respect and acknowledge their silence

(Figure 6). That is, to bestow things with one simple right, the most basic of all: the

right to remain silent.

The modern regime has the tendency to tidily organize our messy being

into sealed and binary ontological compartments, and heritage definitions are of

course examples of such purifying means, enabling us safely to separate the wanted

(heritage) from the unwanted (waste) (see e.g. Burstro m, 2009). In this neatly

organized scheme of dualities the prime divide is between the world of intentionaland thinking subjects on one side and a naturally given object-world of mute things

and non-humans on the other (Latour, 1993). The latter world has no meaningful

existence in itself, but awaits passively its symbolic or metaphoric incarnation

(Ingold, 2000). In this anthropocentric regime of subjective interpretation the

Petursdottir 47



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silence of things, their pre-discursive materiality, is at the same time meaningless

and disturbing; it is an empty otherness that must be infused with meaning and

value through contextualization and embodiment (cf. Benjamin, 1999). A similar

imperative characterizes dominant modes of historical narration, molding the past

as linear, progressive and continuous an order our fragmented material reality,

past or present, has never amounted to. The ruins of the past, the archaeological

record our material heritage is incomplete, fragmented, discontinuous and

silent. But rather than seeing that merely as a problem to be solved by filling in

the gaps and healing the material pastas history, we might occasionally also try out

the option to let things be fragmented and incomplete, to allow them to remain

partly mysterious, and instead allow this otherness to affect the stories we tell (see

Pe tursdo ttir, 2012). After all, . . . silence is perhaps one of the most important

constituents of any story the length, frequency, and quality of pauses can buildsuspense, deliver a de nouement, or show a necessary fallibility in the teller, the

inevitable fragmentation of a narrative thread over time (Ouzman, 2006: 291).

There may therefore even be a historical significance, an evolving historical

lesson, involved in valuing things by letting them be in their material otherness.

It is about time, as suggested by heritage critiques, that we democratize heritage.

It is a fallacy, however, to think that this is best achieved by excluding things or

materiality from such ambitions, which, effectively, is the outcome of a general

intangible heritage conception. Such a conception undermines the role things play

in heritage processes, and thus supports and strengthens further their traditionallyambiguous state within heritage definitions and management. The ruins of

Djupavk and Eyri are good examples of this ambiguity, while at the same time

they can be said to utter their own critique of conventional heritage conceptions.

Through their very presence, and the presence-effects (Gumbrecht, 2004) they

provoke, they urge us to critically consider the significance of the concrete and

Figure 6. Utter silence: the concrete pillars inside the herring oil tank in Dju pavk reflecting

in the still water that covers the floor (Photo: ora Petursdottir).




20/24

tangible in relation to heritage value, to reflect on the discrimination involved in

our management of things and on the possibility of a different kind of heritage a

heritage where ruination, decay and the material being of things are not always

regarded as negative but may be thought of as a generative process of becoming. A

process, even, ofbecoming heritage.

Heritage is a process: dynamic and negotiated, tangible and intangible. It is

about time, in that process, we also acknowledge and value the things called heri-

tage as the things that they are.

Acknowledgements

Many have commented on this article, or parts of it, at earlier stages. I especially thank my

supervisor, Bjrnar Olsen, for his most helpful comments and fruitful discussions. I also

thank my co-supervisor, Gavin Lucas, and other members of the Ruin Memories group, for

valuable input. A version of this article was presented at Stanford University in March 2012.

I would like to express my gratitude to Lynn Meskell for allowing me that opportunity, and

I thank her, Michael Shanks and others at the Stanford Archaeology Centre for welcoming

me to their facilities during the 2012 spring semester, where this paper grew into its final

form.

Notes

1. See e.g. Appadurai, 1986; Bennett, 2010; Brown, 2001, 2003; Gell, 1998; Graves-Brown,

2000; Hodder, 2011; Hoskins, 1998; Ingold, 2000; Latour, 1993, 2005; Meskell, 2004,2005; Miller, 1987, 2005; Olsen, 2003, 2010; Preda, 1999; Tilley, 1994, 2004.

2. For the development from tangible to intangible heritage see e.g. Bortolotto, 2007;

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004; Munjeri, 2004; Ruggles and Silverman, 2009; Smith,

2006; Smith and Akagawa, 2009; and for its limitations see Ahmad, 2006.

3. Modern in this context refers to the twentieth century. Although an ambiguous concept,

and in the Icelandic context no less so, I here relate it to the industrialized Iceland, which

is a reality no earlier than the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Jo nsson, 2004).

4. This new law replaced the older law from 2001 (Lo g um husafriun, 2001; jo minjalo g,

2001) on 1 January 2013.

5. See Benso, 1996, 2000; Introna, 2009; Olsen, 2012.

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Author Biography

o ra Pe tursdo ttir completed an MA in Archaeology from the University of

Troms, Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, in 2007, and is

currently a PhD student at the same university. Her current research is focused on

archaeologies of the recent past and present, predominantly in Iceland. Her PhDproject is part of the research project Ruin Memories: Materiality, Aesthetics and

the Archaeology of the Recent Past (http://www.ruinmemories.org).

Petursdottir 53

Documents

Journal of Social Archaeology 2013 Pétursdóttir 31 53