Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

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5. The institution of heritage
also has its detractors: people who
question its origins and the abusive
‘fetishist’ value attached to the forms
of the underlying culture, in the
name of western humanism. In the
strictest sense of the word, that is to
say in the anthropological sense, our
cultural heritage is only made up of
very modest practices and skills. To
a far greater extent it depends on the
ability to make and use these tools,
especially when these are fi xed as
objects inside a museum showcase.
Too often we forget that the most elaborate
and powerful tool invented by
man is the concept, the instrument
for developing thought, which is very
diffi cult to arrange in a showcase.
Cultural heritage understood as the
sum total of the common evidence of
humankind has been severely criticised
for being a new dogma (Choay,
1992) in a society which has lost its
religious bearings. It is possible,
moreover, to list the successive stages
of building this recent product: heritage
reappropriation (Vicq d’Azyr,
1794), spiritual connotation (Hegel,
1807), mystical, disinterested connotation
(Renan, 1882) and fi nally,
humanism (Malraux, 1947). The
notion of collective cultural heritage,
which only transposes the legal and
economic lexicon to the moral fi eld,
appears suspicious, to say the least,
and can be analysed as being part of
that which Marx and Engels called
ideology, that is to say a by-product
of a socio-economic context intended
to serve special interests. “The
internationalisation of the concept
of heritage is […] not only false, but
dangerous in so far as one imposes a
whole set of knowledge and prejudices
whose criteria are the expression
of values built on aesthetic, moral,
and cultural received ideas, in short
an ideology of a caste in a society
whose structures are not compatible
with those of the third world in
general and Africa in particular”
(Adotevi, 1971). It is all the more
suspect because it coexists with the
private nature of economic property
and seems to serve as the consolation
prize for the deprived.
DERIVATIVES: HERITOLOGY, INHERITANCE.
CORRELATED: COMMUNITY, CULTURAL PROPERTY,
CULTURAL RELIC, EXHIBIT, EVIDENCE, IDENTITY, IMAGE,
LEGACY, LIVING HUMAN TREASURE, MATERIAL CULTURE,
MEMORY, MESSAGE, MONUMENT, NATIONAL TREASURE,
OBJECT, PATRIMONY, REALITY, SEMIOPHORE (SEE
OBJECT) SUBJECT, TERRITORY, THINGS, VALUE, WITNESS.