Making the Subversive Known: A Gender Perspective on Heritage

Almost two decades ago, Laurajane Smith challenged the idea that heritage value is self-evident and developed an alternative conception of heritage, which embraced the “critical” turn in heritage studies. Smith (re)conceptualized heritage as a sociocultural and political process of meaning making, which conditions how individuals or groups mediate the past to create meaning in the present and for the future. Smith’s argument examined how heritage entails a continuous performance of meaning and pushed the limits of what is/should be considered as heritage. This performative shift in heritage studies signals a critical point in understanding heritage as something constantly negotiated and (re)constructed. However, we still need to scrutinize how the notion of performance helps us better understand the process by which heritage enacts change. In this respect, I consider the gender paradigm, with the aim to rewrite the concept of heritage in gender performance, and thus consolidate and move ahead the current academic discussion on performative heritage. Beginning from the premise that both heritage and gender are rooted in a performance that is learned and repeatedly constituted, I focus on how gender is disrupted and (trans)formed in a given group; and how subversive gender allows for new insights into the potential of heritage to engage with multiple directions in the process of meaning making. To explain how gender contributes to the heritage process, I employ performative theories of gender, feminist approaches to the production of knowledge, and critical frameworks for thinking about heritage. This paper as a whole discusses how gender has the potential to reestablish heritage as a potentially subversive process, which encompasses numerous epistemic (inter)actions—situated contextually within diverse perspectives but never settled in place, always open to negotiation and transformation.