The Heritage of Heritage

This chapter discusses the recontextualization of past events evident in the heritages displayed in museums. Groups of men and women, especially those who are living in postcolonial nations, have rewritten their nations' past events in the process of turning these into heritages. Traditional objects (artifacts of “indigenous” culture) and the institutions with which they are associated were being pulled from the “anthropology section” of the museum, recontextualized, and given new meaning within contemporary heritage discourses. The remaking of the past into a “heritage” is important in not only with regard to nationalism but also to the neoliberal system of profiling, branding, and marketing.