Moving Heritage Forward

Tourism, the Popular and the Hypermodern

Mike Robinson

In Prague, as in a number of post- communist capital cities, there is a Museum of Communism.An initial reading of this small museum, its objects and displays, provides an important insightinto a relatively short but critical period of the history of the Czech people. The museum isparticularly popular with tourists from the West of Europe, in part highlighting a voyeuristicfascination with a time whereby the East of Europe was essentially closed to view and yet oc-cupied a powerful place in the West's imagination. With some unforeseen irony the Museumis located above a busy MacDonalds restaurant providing visitors with a very real sense of thedramatic changes which have taken place in less than twenty years. This provides a clue to thedeeper significance of the museum which lies in the way that the' past'- in this case a recent pastwith all the uneasiness of repression within close memory- has been mobilised and packagedfor international tourists and locals, in a way which allows visitors to make sense of the changeprocess. The packaging and the presentation is important as it openly, symbolically, and notwithout distortions, transposes history into heritage. Heritage is an outcome of a social proc-ess of denotation; the selective transposition of the contemporary upon the past.² This process,which is effectively structured around notions of curating and exhibiting the world, is a keymarker of modernity. It works on the idea of' framing' as a means of capture and display. InPrague the communist period is framed through the museum and a narrative which both edu-cates and entertains. Also in places such as Budapest or Riga, the vast Soviet statues are collectedand framed within landscaped parks and gardens as if rare species of trees in some vast abore-tum.³ Whilst still very much a contested past, the communist heritage as exhibited in Praguenonetheless takes its place alongside more' traditional' heritage sites of the Czech Republic.

I cite the example of the construction of communist heritage as it, in part, highlights what Iconsider to be a re- imagining and a re- semanticisation of heritage in the public realm. In thisshort paper I discuss the idea that' traditional' notions of cultural heritage are constantly beingchallenged by a re- drawing of boundaries which are increasingly inclusive and accessible both

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The growth of European' communist tourism' in states now able to openly and playfully critique the regimesof 1945-1990 is also open to' western' tourists who previously would have only experienced communismthrough novels and film. See, for instance, studies undertaken by:

Jozwiak, J.F. and Mermann, E.( 2006) The Wall in Our Minds? Colonization, Integration, and Nostalgia, TheJournal of Popular Culture, Vol. 39, No. 5, 2006, pp. 780-795.

Light, D.( 2000) Gazing on Communism: Heritage Tourism and Post- communist Identities in Germany,Hungary and Romania, Tourism Geographies Vol. 2, No.2, pp. 157-176.

Enns, A.( 2007) The Politics of Ostalgie: Post- socialist Nostalgia in Recent German Film, Screen 48: 4, pp.475-491.

As David Lowenthal puts it: the past is" an artefact of the present."( p.xvi). Lowenthal, D.( 1985) The Past is aForeign Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See for instance: James, B.( 1999). Fencing in the Past: Budapest's Statue Park Museum. Media, Culture andSociety. 21, 291-312.

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