记忆、“遗产”、历史:遗产继承的兴起与“遗产继承研究”流派的学术成果

Memory, ’Heritage’ and History: The Rise of ’Heritage’ and the Academic Achievements of the ’Heritage Studies’ School

兴于1960年代的西方,在1980年代波及全球的遗产继承热潮先后催生了“遗产继承研究”与“批判遗产继承研究”两个流派。在文化自觉的遗产继承观念与实践勃兴的历史背景下,论述了“遗产继承研究”流派的经典著作及其核心学术成果,尤其是记忆、遗产继承与历史实践的区分,它们各自的特性与相互关系;并从“遗产”与“文化遗产”概念多义叠合的角度,探讨了遗产继承与历史实践的区分主张虽然具有重要意义,却未能受到广泛认识与应用的原因。和相关研究相比,主要在以下三方面进行了拓展。其一,从词源入手,分析了“heritage”这个词动词性的“继承”含义,该词指具体遗存对象的常用词义“遗产”只是特定继承人有意识的“继承”行为的结果。其二,确定“遗产继承研究”的核心学术贡献在于明确区分了记忆、遗产继承与历史实践,阐明了它们各自的目的、特性及其相互关系。其三,基于被誉为“遗产继承研究之父”的戴维·洛温塔尔1996年的名著《遗产继承圣战与历史战利品》,梳理并讨论了“遗产继承”的四大特征:当下主义、民粹主义、派系主义与信仰主义。有助于人们更好地理解“遗产继承研究”的背景、核心成果及其所持的立场与视角,从而更好地理解“遗产继承研究”和“批判遗产继承研究”的差异。

In the 1960s and 1970s, a culturally self-conscious ’heritage’ movement emerged from the bottom up in the West and spread globally in the 1980s. The wide-ranging cultural and social consequences of this ’heritage’ boom have spawned two academic schools, namely ’Heritage Studies’(HS) and ’Critical Heritage Studies’(CHS).Unlike traditional’heritage research’that focus on specific remains from the past, English-speaking scholars in both schools focus on the verb meaning-’to inherit’-of the word’heritage’, which derived from this word’s latin root heres(=heir), and the concrete manifestations of this’to inherit’ behaviour, that is to say, focus on the subject, choice, rights and interests of ’to inherit’ and its social, political and cultural implications. Since the French’patrimoine’does not have the meaning of autonomous inheritance, French-speaking scholars coined the term’patrimonialisation’to carry out related research.This paper reviews representative scholars and works of ’Heritage Studies’, and details the three main areas of research in ’Heritage Studies’ :(1) the causes of the rise of culturally self-conscious’heritage’-’to inherit’-movement;(2) the distinction between memory, heritage and history as verbs, their respective purposes, characteristics and their interrelationships;(3) criticizing the misuse, abuse and adverse consequences of the concepts of memory and ’heritage’-’to inherit’.Compared to related researches, this paper expands in the following three aspects. Firstly, starting from etymology analysis, this paper analyses the meaning of the word’heritage’as verb’to inherit’, and the common meaning of the word referring to specific remains from the past is only the result of an autonomous’inheritance’behavior by specific heir or heirs. Secondly, it is argued that the core academic contribution of’Heritage Studies’ lies in the clear distinction between memory, heritage and history as verbs, and in the identification of their respective purposes, characteristics and their interrelationships. Thirdly, based on The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, a famous book written by David Lowenthal-the ’father of heritage studies’-in 1996, this paper sorts out and discusses four main characteristics of the heritage-as-verb: presentism, populism, partisan[ism] and fideism.Moreover, focusing on three books of Patrick Wright, Robert Hewison and Raphael Samuel, this paper analyses the critique of heritage-as-verb by’heritage-baiters’, as well as its refutation by Raphael Samuel. Finally, this paper discusses polysemous overlapping phenomenon of terms such as memory and ’heritage’ in their practical application, and thus explores why the distinction between memory, heritage and history as verbs has not been widely understood, even though’Heritage Studies’ have shown their distinction has important theoretical and practical significance.The research in this paper is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the background, main achievements, and the positions and perspectives of’Heritage Studies’, and thus to a better understanding of the differences between ’Heritage Studies’ and ’Critical Heritage Studies’.