The previous chapter demonstrated that curators view their national heritage as a 'common heritage,' but the strongest duty is probably that it is a national heritage. In this chapter I will discuss if World Heritage is a national heritage or a 'common heritage of humankind,' where 'common' is interpreted as a metanarrative of a shared history of humankind. I will discuss these issues through debating the role of memory and the construction of a global culture, before I suggest a provisional - and unfortunately Western - notion of being both national and cosmopolitan.

4.1. Memory and global culture

Cultural heritage as a source of memory is an important aspect of the preservation of cultural heritage. Sites and monuments are symbols demonstrating the unique character of the society, be it a nation in the tradition from Herder,(1) or a nativistic movement.(2) Material culture is the constitutive element of the identity of the people, it belongs to this people who are situated within a particular historical and social setting, and the argument for protecting the material traces of the past can be framed in the narrative of protecting for the nation.

Memory is also important in the protection of the 'common heritage of humankind.' Instead of serving as a national memory, World Heritage sites should remind us about common human roots and origin, as emphasised by the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, in 1981.(3) World Heritage sites therefore constitute the identity of being human, and Michell states: '...it is an imperative that cultural sites of the World Heritage List be recognized and valued as a material record of man's historical identity.'(4)

This construction of a 'common heritage of humankind' can be interpreted as the construction of a global culture, or a common present, but the task is difficult. First, it is doubtful if a global culture unites people and constructs peace, which is one objective of the listing. Designation is prestigious, and from a conflict oriented view it is a competition, or as Featherstone puts it, a 'coming together of competing national cultures engaged in global cultural prestige contests is one possibility for a global culture.'(5)

Second, the construction of a global culture can itself be critisized as impossible. It has been argued against the possibility of creating a global culture or a 'world identity' because global culture - unlike national cultures - is memoryless, and it must be 'painfully put together, artificially, out of the many existing folk and national identities into which humanity has so long been divided.'(6) From this perspective any project aiming at creating regional identities, for example a European, can not succeed either: instead of uniting, common experiences highlight diversity and sharpen divisions.(7)

It is possible that colonialism or the World Wars - as global experiences - are world memories. Examples on this kind of memory are the symbolic World Heritage sites of the Island of Gorée, Senegal (which 'serves as a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation'(8), Auschwitz and Hiroshima. These monuments are expressions of solidarity between people, but as Arendt pointed out in 1957, this is a 'negative solidarity, based on the fear of global destruction.'(9)

Auschwitz was inscribed in 1979 as 'a symbol of the cruelty of man to his fellow-men in the 20th century,'(10) and the work of Auschwitz museum is to 'contribute to the maintenance of world peace.'(11) Before inscription on the List it was recommended that no more sites of similar nature should be inscribed but 'be symbolised through it.'(12) However, in 1996 the Hiroshima Peace Memorial was designated, and the nomination report reads: '...the Dome has become a universal monument of all mankind, symbolising the hope for perpetual peace and the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons on earth.'(13)

Although these sites can be world memories, it can be objected that they remind us more of historic cleavages than unity.(14) The debate in the Committee when Hiroshima was inscribed indicates this cleavage, and both China and the United States objected the inscription. The latter emphasised the current strong and friendly relationship with Japan, but said:

The United States is concerned about the lack of historical perspectives in the nomination of Genbaku Dome. The events antecedent to the United States' use of atomic weapons to end World War II are key to understanding the tragedy of Hiroshima. Any examination of the period leading up to 1945 should be placed in the appropriate historical context. The United States believes the inscription of war sites outside the scope of the Convention. We urge the Committee to address the question of the suitability of war sites for the World Heritage List.(15)

This inscription also demonstrates how political changes affect listing and that World Heritage designation is not an a-political activity. When Japan started to work with the inscription of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial after the acceptance of the Convention in 1992, a joint inscription of Hiroshima and the first test site of nuclear weapons in the United States was planned. However, the United States withdrew the project and in 1996 opposed the inscription.(16) Interesting in this context is the American political climate before the fiftieth commemoration of World War II. The discussion in 1994 concerning the exhibition of Enola Gay - the aircraft that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima - at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, illustrates the point. The exhibition should show the context and consequences of the bomb, but could not go on display as intended because the 'Air Force veterans went wild. Here they were, amid the festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings, ready to take their turn in the sequence of celebrations. Instead... youthful visitors to the Smithsonian would soon find their grandparents reviled as racists and war criminals.'(17)

If war sites can serve as world memories, is it then possible that other national sites can serve as reminders of a common human history? It is probably in terms of a metanarrative one must speak in this context, however, this narrative is criticised. Metanarratives are said to belong to the modern age, and not in a post-modern era that is incredulous towards this narrative form.(18) At the same time there is a return of grand theories in the humanities,(19) but the critics have stressed that grand theories only are local narratives that look like grand theories from inside.(20)

Despite a possible collapse of the metanarrative, I take the position that the narrative of speaking of a 'common heritage of humankind' can be useful. To view human history and culture in context of the whole - heritage of humankind - must be an important approach when an inter-governmental organisation such as UNESCO, with 185 Member States,(21) protects cultural heritage. The organisation cannot speak only of the heritage of one nation, but must make statements where humankind is viewed as having a common history.

The major problem in this context is that not all heritage is 'common,' but only the 'outstanding universal.' Why only some heritage is the 'common heritage of humankind' in the context of the Convention, can possibly be interpreted as a granting of a status of monuments and sites by protection under law.(22) Protection under the Convention gives the sites new names - World Heritage sites - and they are allocated to UNESCO.

By allocating heritage to UNESCO it is possible to say that national heritage becomes a 'common heritage' where rights and duties of the world-community are specifically defined. Therefore we can not say that people can claim individual rights on the 'common heritage.' The heritage is still situated in a setting - historical, social, legal - and any argument of a human ownership can not give the individual rights as defined by itself.(23) At the same time as the heritage is situated in a setting, the allocation is to a certain degree a depolitisation of the nation in its freedom to do what it wants with its priceless national heritage. The List can, from this point of view, reflect a cosmopolitan position and represent a post-modern condition of unity through diversity: the unity of being humans and the diversity of human culture.

4.2. National and Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitanism reflects a Stoic ideal of being a citizen not only of one polis, but a Megapolis including the entire universe.(24) There are several different ways of perceiving cosmopolitanism. It can be a state different from the nationalistic idea of placing a people specific in the context of time and place, the nation.(25) However, a cosmopolitan attitude recognise diversities and one can say with Hannerz that it is an attempt to transform oneself 'to engage with the Other. It is an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity.'(26) This interpretation contradicts Smith's interpretation of cosmopolitanism as denoting a dissolution of ethnicity,(27) but opens up the possibility that we can be both national and cosmopolitan, and this is nothing new. Kohn has for example shown that Rousseau and Herder were '"fathers" of modern nationalism' and at same time cosmopolitans who regarded 'the whole of mankind as a greater and higher fatherland.'(28)

The role of the List as representing both a national and a cosmopolitan view of cultural heritage is perhaps the most confusing element of it and it is a good example on two forces of the globalisation process where the construction of a 'common' World Heritage reinforces national identities. It is therefore possible that a common global present not deactivates nationalism, but reactivates it, and construction of national cultures cuntinues.(29) This global and national aspects of the List has been emphasised several times. When the Minister of Culture in Tunisia welcomed the Committee to Carthage in 1991, he stressed that protection of cultural heritage is important to sustain the national identity, but 'within a worldwide context.'(30) Education concerning World Heritage shows the same relationship; cultural identities should be reinforced, but also knowledge about other cultures.(31)

The possibility of both a national and a cosmopolitan attitude to World Heritage, shows that 'nationalism' is an important aspect of the List, and it will probably always be. In 1979 it was emphasised that nominations concerning historical events or famous people should be avoided because these could be 'strongly influenced by nationalism or other particularism in contradiction with the objectives of the World Heritage Convention.'(32) If particularism contradicts the Convention, it must probably be lived with. The wish of cultural heritage as - expressed by Lipe - 'symbols not of nations, but of the common human interest,'(33) will perhaps not be a view shared by all nations, but mainly in the context of UNESCO's work on cultural heritage. At most national levels the cultural heritage will still be symbols of their nation, or as Hegel once said about the State: '...what their ancestors have produced, belongs to them and lives in their memory. All is their possession, just as they are possessed by it; for it constitutes their existence, their being.'(34)

Footnotes

(1) Collingwood 1946/1993: 88ff

(2) Linton 1943: 231

(3) UNESCO Doc. 5 January 1982: § 4

(4) Michell 1988: 26

(5) Featherstone 1991: 147

(6) Smith 1990: 180

(7) Smith 1995: 131

(8) UNESCO 1996b: 54

(9) Arendt 1957: 541

(10) UNESCO 1996b: 50

(11) WHC Doc. 6 June 1978: § 46

(12) UNESCO Doc. 20 September 1979: 21

(13) ICOMOS 1996: 117

(14) Smith 1990: 180

(15) UNESCO Doc. 10 March 1997: Annex V

(16) Henry Cleere, pers.com. 13 June 1997

(17) Wallace 1995: 32

(18) Lyotard 1984: xxiv

(19) Skinner 1985

(20) Preucel & Hodder 1996: 14

(21) www.unesco.org/general/eng/about/members.html

(22) Carman 1996: 161

(23) Cf. Warren 1989/1993: 6

(24) Kristeva 1991: 58

(25) Kellas 1991: 30

(26) Hannerz 1990: 239

(27) Smith 1981:1

(28) Kohn 1971: 121-122

(29) Cf. Foster 1991

(30) UNESCO Doc. 12 December 1991: § 5

(31) Khawajike 1990: 15

(32) UNESCO Doc. 30 November 1979b: § 35

(33) Lipe 1984: 10

(34) Hegel 1956: 52