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POSSESSED BY THE PAST: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, by David Lowenthal
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More people than ever before are joining the "cult of heritage" and searching for their "roots". Lowenthal exposes and examines our new fascination with ancestry and how it has separated us from one another and caused us to distort history. With erudition and style, Lowenthal has captured an important and compelling trend.
- Sales Rank: #1644198 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Free Press
- Published on: 1996-09-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.75" h x 6.50" w x 1.25" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
- tHE AUTHOR EXPLAINS THE RISE OF THE NEW OBSESSION WITH THE PAST AND SHOWS ITS POWER FOR BOTH GOOD AND EVIL
Amazon.com Review
The more things change, the more we become nostalgic about the way they once were. Perhaps because we dread the present we are tempted to seek sanctuary in our "heritage" -- a broad term that can include everything from the Pyramids at Giza to old Elvis records -- says David Lowenthal (author of The Past is a Foreign Country). At its best, the preservation of our heritage allows us to form communities and maintain vital traditions. At its worst, it abuses real history for chauvinistic gain.
From Kirkus Reviews
A keenly observant, if at times pretentious, exploration of identity politics writ large at the national level. What Lowenthal (Geography/University College, London) calls ``the cult of heritage'' is seen today in historical theme parks; museum and commemorative policy; child adoption; a booming illicit trade in art and antiquities; and most ominously, in xenophobia, racism, and genocide. Frequently heritage involves a national or ethnic trauma that needs to be recalled, such as the Holocaust for the Jews, the Potato Famine for the Irish, and the wars that kept Poland subjugated for years. At times, however, this emphasis sparks a kind of victim politics that brooks no disagreements and can even lead to a cycle of mutual grievances and bloodshed, as in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the Middle East. Unlike history, Lowenthal notes, heritage makes no attempt at objectivity as it views the past with present-minded purpose. Heritage further deforms the past because it is ``popularized, commoditized and politicized,'' in the form of kitschy theme parks like Disney's aborted Historyland and the more ambitious if still somewhat misleading Williamsburg (where management is still uncertain how fully to depict slavery in this colonial capital). Lowenthal is especially canny about heritage as an all-consuming growth industry, noting that Stonehenge is now protected from predatory tourists by barbed wire. However, he has caught more than the net of his argument can reasonably hold (it's a wide range from essentially liberal curatorial issues to the horrors of genocide), and his prose aims for high-flown rhetoric when a little earthiness might have been helpful. Moreover, he never really shows the reader how to separate the wheat of heritage (its function as ``creative act'') from the chaff (the many faults he describes). Still, a provocative examination of how nations worship at, and are sometimes sacrificed on, the altar of memory. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Intriguing, but disagreeable and contradictory
By Ranger Reub
Did apartments in ancient Rome have doors? Did medieval towns stink? Did 17th century clothes itch? Unfortunately we don't know the answer to any of these curious questions, David Lowenthal points out in his book Possessed by the Past, because no one at the time felt such commonplaces worth recording (114). Heritage, however, has become all too commonplace, at the expense of history, Lowenthal chides in his follow-up volume to the sometimes praised, often controversial The Past is a Foreign Country.
Many of Lowenthal's arguments are intriguing. He explains that heritage now pervades modern society, especially in the West. He contends that heritage to many is escapist, permitting a person to hold on to something more stable in an uncertain world and often sentiments towards that stability override substantial concerns. Technophobia nurtures heritage and its growth reflects fears of a menacing future (10-11). Possessed by the Past shows that heritage, like history, faces continuous shifting attitudes and reinterpretations. Commemoration has transferred from personal to collective, elite to popular subjects (63). For instance, statues worldwide pay homage to the anonymous fallen, such as the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, rather than generals and admirals. Formerly taboo to come from a commoner background, these days such lineage has morphed to the chic (16).
While discussing the upsurge of heritage nowadays, Lowenthal at times contradicts himself. The first chapter describes a current "heritage glut," saying that archivists, specifically, keep everything, which causes chaos by making "augmented heritage" less accessible and "suffocatingly unmanageable" (12). Later in the book he seems to advocate saving everything and encourages an emotional attachment to the items saved to make them more meaningful for heirs, saying, "self-regard supplants intergenerational generosity (52).
In an underlying disagreeable tone, Lowenthal asserts that heritage is the antithesis of history, but unfortunately it takes him until Chapter five to concretely define heritage, though the book focuses on the word from its first page. At that point, he muses that heritage is "a declaration of faith in that past" (121). Heritage to him "uses historical traces and tells historical tales," but "exaggerates and omits, candidly invents and frankly forgets, and thrives on ignorance and error" (121). Succinctly, what counts in heritage "is not checkable fact but credulous allegiance," while history's chief hallmark is testable truth (120-121). His arguments would be more easily understood and interpreted had he made the reader know how he defined heritage from the very beginning.
Group solidarity is innate to forming and fostering heritage; Lowenthal ruminates in his conclusion (248). Heritage in his eyes builds collective pride and purpose (249). However, in the first chapter of the volume he expressly states that heritage is self-defeating, that loving things too much destroys them (27). So, in essence, heritage brings people together to destroy what they love. In the vernacular of many a student in today's age, Lowenthal concludes through the pages of Possessed by the Past: "Heritage bites, but dude, at least it brings people together once in a while."
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A Provocative, but not always convincing, Discussion of the Heritage Industry
By Roger D. Launius
I first became interested in the issue of heritage during the preparations for the centennial of flight of the Wrights brothers celebrated in 2003. This book explores the rise of commemorations and heritage, and what it portends for the serious study of history. In one form or another commemorations of important historical events have been with us since humans have counted time. Always serving several objectives at once, in the United States these have often taken the form of publicly-recognized national holidays that enhance civic pride and national unity. The Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and the like are official commemorations designed explicitly to serve the decidedly nationalistic purpose of forging and reinforcing the cohesiveness of a people within a common memory. Memory of the past reigns supreme in such commemorations, it represents the personification of what David Lowenthal calls "heritage." His definition of heritage, and its relationship to history, is instructive: "History is the past that actually happened, heritage a partisan perversion, the past manipulated for some present aim" (p. 102)
As Lowenthal comments, the differences between this heritage--essentially what we choose to remember about the past, what some have called the "digested past"--and the unrecoverable past that is never truly knowable at all because of the inexactitude with which historians are able to discover it, sets up an enormous difficulty for historians involved in public commemoration. Heritage provides the glue that holds together the group in an instable world. Like a predator stalking weak members of a herd dissension seems to range freely over the landscape, and in a multicultural nation such as the United States the cacophony of competing ideas and issues, priorities and prerogatives thrive. Heritage, of course, helps to forge a unique identity that is real and powerful and all-encompassing, and in the processing helps define ourselves and our nation.
As a nation, Americans seem enthralled with their past and deploy it at every opportunity to achieve benefits defined differently by different groups and times. Those may range from lofty principles identifiable as such by all too crass economic motives to sinister objectives based on self-regarding chauvinism and hatred of other groups. In such a climate commemorations of historical events become the tools, or perhaps weapons, used in contorting historical truth to the ends of the group supervising the commemoration. This is, at a fundamental level, the concern that Lowenthal voices throughout "Possessed by the Past." Such activities, he warns, falsify history by succumbing to "chauvinist, shallow, vulgar, commercial, and mendacious perversions" (p. 104). As he puts it, history "differs from heritage not, as people generally supposed, in telling the truth, but in trying to do so despite being aware that truth is a chameleon and its chroniclers fallible beings. The most crucial distinction is that truth in heritage commits us to some present creed; truth in history is a flawed effort to understand the past on its own terms" (p. 119).
In "Possessed by the Past" Lowenthal ranges from special commemorations to the battle over Disney's "Historyland," the frenzied search for Elvis memorabilia, the challenges of Colonial Williamsburg, the lack of historical understanding displayed in the animated Disney film "Pocahontas," and a host of other skirmishes in the heritage wars of the 1990s. He notes that these activities pose a threat to historical understanding. "Such acts," he insists, "undeniably deform history for heritage aims; and heritage is further corrupted by being popularized, commoditized, and politicized" (p. 87).
At sum, Lowenthal can see no middle ground in what he contends is, as his subtitle notes, "the heritage crusade and the spoils of history." History as a discipline and a body of knowledge arrived at through a distinct methodology must hold a line that ensures its credibility as it faces an onslaught from popularizers, pundits, politicians, and partnerships that seek to use it for their own ends. He believes that the heritage industry is less interested in reality and verifiable concepts than in popular recreations that capture "the spirit of the age." So while history and heritage are intertwined Lowenthal does not see them as the same thing and those differences need to be made clear to all and guarded carefully in the future.
"Possessed by the Past" is a powerfully evocative book that sounds an alarm for the historical profession. At times, however, I found it infuriating, even as I found it always provocative and reflective. Lowenthal has a rather bitter perspective on the history/heritage debate. No doubt that is the result of wounds suffered in numerous battles. I am sympathetic to that situation, having experienced a few myself, but sometimes he displays his own sullenness too aggressively. For example, his "pox on both your houses" commentary is over the top. "To bolster heritage faith with historical scholarship, as is now the fashion, smudges the line between fact and faith," he writes, and "to embrace heritage as history cedes it a credence it neither asks for nor deserves" (p. 250). I believe that withdrawal from the field of battle into the proverbial ivory towers of academia does not represent a strategy for success in combating the "heritage movement" in the United States. Engagement, and offering course corrections for heritage efforts, is the only appropriate answer. To do otherwise ensures victory for those who would use history inappropriately for their own ends.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
and how people think about / reconstruct the past – makes the critical distinction between history and heritage – history when i
By Andrew Adelmann
I flagged this recently in generating a list of influential (for me) books I’ve read, over the past 33 years. This one was influential in terms of my thinking about history, and how people think about / reconstruct the past – makes the critical distinction between history and heritage – history when it’s practiced in good faith is about trying to understand the past on its own terms (what really happened, what life was like for the people then) whereas heritage is about the uses of the past to serve some agenda in the present. It’s impossible to make a clean distinction – the idea of history as objective is an illusion – one’s own agenda which is unavoidably influenced by present concerns, will always influence the agenda of any effort to study or write about history. A book about e.g. ancient Greece that’s written today would be different from one written 100 yrs ago, because today’s concerns are different so we understand that era and its significance for us, differently than people would have early in the 20th century.
Nonetheless the history / heritage distinction seems valid – an important reminder of the challenge of putting yourself into the past, the difficulty of understanding what it was like in past eras, more challenging probably the further back you go. Also, I recall the author mentioned that museums are mostly about heritage rather than history, something I have kept in mind in museum visits since.
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