Time-space politics and heritagisation in Africa

Understanding Where to Begin Decolonisation

Bibliographic Data

ID5701430
AuthorsJ Kelechi Ugwuanyi (0000-0001-8652-059X, University of Nigeria, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume27
Issue4
Pages356-374
Publication date2021-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13527258.2020.1795907
OpenAlexW3044709211
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited40

This paper reflects on how heritage knowledge is built around time-space discourses. It takes a Critical Heritage Studies (CHS) position to examine heritage knowledge systems through the lenses of Walter Mignolo’s decolonial praxis on ‘locus of enunciation’ and Tim Ingold’s exegesis on ‘dwelling perspectives’. Drawing from ethnographic evidence collected among the Igbo of Nigeria, the study engages Indigenous concepts and heritage ontologies in the context of time and space in heritage making in Africa. Secondly, it interrogates the evidence with the continuity that occurs in society through intergenerational knowledge systems that began with known ancestors. Thirdly, such sustainability mechanisms are examined using what I call ‘territorial communion’ – the ways in which those local knowledge systems are ‘printed’ on the landscape through human-nature ‘relational ontologies’, and how such pictured living holds heritage in a continuum. Finally, the paper contends that a good knowledge of intergenerational ‘dwelling perspectives’ from different loci of enunciation would begin the decoloniality of heritage in Africa

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Colonialism · Cultural heritage · Decoloniality · Decolonization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Igbo · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Sociology · Traditional knowledge · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Law · Philosophy · Ecology