Struggling over the past: heritage-regimes and rhetoric in Myanmar

• Applicant: Dr. Felix Girke
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Asian Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 314693735

In their struggles over often antagonistic imaginations of a future society, many actors in Myanmar invoke the notion of (cultural) heritage. Ever since the so-called opening up of this isolationist country in 2010/11, topics such as nation, state, civil society, religion, tourism and political culture are often negotiated in terms of heritage. The decrease of censorship and surveillance has opened spaces for the articulation of criticism of and alternatives to the long-dominant and state-sponsored heritage-regime that served to legitimize power relations by propagating an ideology of harmony. Today, it serves actors as a foil in their efforts to outline alternative directions of social change, equally in terms of heritage. The project builds on Critical Heritage Studies, which understands cultural heritage as a processual political practice. It employs the methodology of Rhetoric Culture Theory in order to grasp the persuasive character and the agonistic moment of this struggle over the past and its interpretation. The analysis of rhetorical strategies allows access to the nexus of governance, social change, and the interplay of global and local discourses. The state-sponsored heritage-regime and its contestations will be investigated in four empirical arenas: (1) the anti-colonial and Buddhism-biased nation-building by state institutions; (2) the embattled commemoration of the hero of independence, Aung San; (3) the efforts to conserve the colonial architecture; and (4) the branding of the country for international tourism. The dynamic relations between these four tightly entangled empirical fields reveal the interactions of various economic, political, and cultural interests. These interactions lead to the constitution of actors, their performative practices and persuasive narratives. The analysis of this pluralization of cultural heritage promises a new understanding of contemporary change in Myanmar. The project is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in the former capital Yangon. The most central methods are observation, interviewing, and textual, visual, and audio analysis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants