Decolonial turn on heritage? Liberation Heritage Route as a postcolonial alternative of patrimonial activation

• Main Author: Ester Massó Guijarro
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Pontificia Comillas 2017-05-01
• Series: Pensamiento. Revista de Investigación e Información Filosófica
• Subjects: patrimonio; giro decolonial; Liberation Heritage Route; Sudáfrica; reconciliación.
• Online Access: https://revistas.upcomillas.es/index.php/pensamiento/article/view/7713

Considering the decolonial turn as a key epistemological axis for troubling heritage, the Liberation Heritage Route in South Africa is brought up as a discursive example, as a unique type of patrimonial activation where heritage (collective memory) is linked to the struggle of a people for their rights, beyond etÚic or national folklore. It will try to show how the Liberation Heritage Route —as a case study— implies a living and notorious example of the very conceptual challenge of this work: it is a subaltern heritage (or shows a pathway for heritage's subalternization) and most especially, it is a patent form of holistic heritage activation, where the tangible and the intangible, the physical and symbolic, monumental and spiritual, come together in a unique and indivisible product at the service of justice and dignity.