Organizer: Britta Timm Knudsen

This workshop aims at investigating what the claim for decolonizing European heritage entails both in Europe and in former colonized countries. Through the perspective of decoloniality we aim to look at how dialogue among different epistemic traditions succeeds the unattained celebration of Eurocentrism, how new actors in alternative subnational groupings become the primary agents of such a development and how new heritage initiatives take place in urban environments where different affective ecologies intermingle, superpose but also conflict.

The workshop will on the one hand present various case studies of localized grass root mobilizations that aim at decolonizing cityspaces (examples from Australia, South Africa, Belgium, Congo, Turkey, Norway etc.). This entails scrutiny of their visual (and otherwise sensuous) alternative representations and how they are enmeshed within a concrete urban environment that is haunted by various difficult pasts. In this part of the workshop we will see different examples of grass root heritage management that responds to multiverse epistemologies and that enter dialogues with cityscapes that open multiple layers of narratives. On the other hand it will discuss what this decolonial change signifies for the future of Europe who’s role is altered due to geo-political grand changes of power structures and due to the rise of neo- nationalism in Europe that threatens the transnational endeavor in the European project.

How can we use heritage to conceive differently of Europe’s future than the scenarios already outlined: a fenced “fort Europe” that resists pressure from the “outside” by re-enforcing borders or a shattered Europe consisting in small sovereign nation-states that bury the idea of Europe as a transnational entity. Is the answer to “Europeanize” heritage and entangle further with former colonized territories?, is the answer to “become minoritarian”? and how do these answers influence colonial heritage making in the future are some of the questions we try to discuss during this workshop.