Processes of indigenous heritage construction: Lines of discussion, axes of analysis and Methodological approaches

Abstract

This article presents some analytical axes and methodological approaches for examining processes of indigenous heritage construction; namely, of memories, knowledges, practices and cultural goods from sectors that have been constructed like otherness and subalternized. In recent years, nation-states and international organizations have created heritage policies under a larger paradigm of "cultural diversity". This paper aims to critically discuss "heritage" as both a process and as a political practice. As such, this is less a normative analysis than an exploration of the ways in which different sectors engage with heritage, and the relationships, subjectivities, affects, political struggles, types of knowledge, and visions and divisions of the social world that such dynamics generate. By examining how certain classifications and expressions of "the past" and "indigenous culture" are able to be constructed as heritage in present-day Argentina, and by looking at the different levels of dialogue and dispute initiated by indigenous populations in hegemonic processes, this paper seeks to rethink how we analyze the "geographies of imagination and management" of "ethnic diversity" in heritage processes and the construction of memory and its variable joints by these sectors.