Too many things to keep for the future?

Citation

Macdonald S, Morgan J & Fredheim H (2020) Too many things to keep for the future?. In: Harrison R, DeSilvey C, Holtorf C, Macdonald S, Bartolini N, Breithoff E, Fredheim H, Lyons A, May S, Morgan J & Penrose S (eds.) Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices. London: UCL Press, pp. 155-168. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787356009

Abstract
First paragraph: In some ways, profusion could be said to be an inexorable condition of heritage: there is more that could be conserved than possibly can be, at least according to current technological and space-time conditions. Moreover, as a mode of according value, heritage is selective – it operates by much not making the cut. Valuable past – heritage – swims in a sea of, and is effectively buoyed up by, all that sinks into oblivion (see also Chapters 1 and 2 in this book). In some contexts, however, there is a particularly heightened sense of there being a profusion of objects, places and practices – even ‘a growing sense of too muchness’, as Elizabeth Chin (2016, 7) puts it – that might be saved. What are the consequences of such profusion for heritage futures? How and in what ways do some things – and some of their accompaniments – rather than others come to be kept?

People

Dr Jennie Morgan

Senior Lecturer in Heritage, History