Heritage, landscape, palimpsests and movement: hidden stories and alternative narratives
Concepts of heritage and landscape often go together in a mutually supporting manner. Particularly when associated with narratives of the nation, therefore, heritage-landscapes seem to answer questions. Moving beyond perceiving them as mere products or physical artefacts to be ‘preserved’, this paper considers the consequences of thinking processually about both landscapes and heritage. Focussing on the ancient bridge of Tarr Steps in Exmoor National Park, this paper examines how taken-for-granted ideas of landscape palimpsests, monumental heritage and nationhood can be disrupted. Furthermore, through reflecting in particular on the experience of walking across a bridge that keeps being washed away, the paper opens up a creative space of heritage landscaping, in which haptic experience, ephemerality and movement provide a productive possibility of a more radical heritage tradition. The paper, therefore, raises questions about the work that heritage and landscape does – and can do – specifically in terms of the conceptualisation of temporality, issues of authenticity and activist politics.
All are welcome to attend. Join us in Pathfoot Room C22 or attend via Teams.
About the speaker
David C Harvey is an associate professor in critical heritage studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and an honorary professor of historical and cultural geography at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom). His work has focussed on the geographies of heritage, and he has contributed to some key heritage debates, including processual understandings of heritage, extending the temporal depth of heritage, the outlining of heritage-landscape and heritage-climate change relations and the opening up of hidden memories through oral history. His recent works include The Real Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of English Farming 1939-1985 (with Paul Brassley et al., 2021), which won the Joan Thirsk Prize (2022), Creating Heritage: Unrecognised Pasts and Rejected Futures (edited with Tom Carter et al., 2020), Commemorative Spaces of the First World War: Historical Geography at the Centenary (edited with James Wallis, 2018), and The Future of Heritage as Climates Change: Loss, Adaptation and Creativity (edited with Jim Perry, 2015). He is on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Heritage Studies, and co-edits a Berghahn Book Series Exploration in Heritage Studies. In his spare time, David cycles a lot, plays a bit of football and struggles to learn Danish.