Edited book: Polarized Pasts

This book has been in the works for some time and I am so happy it is out! The volume pulls critical voices from different academic spheres into a conversation about polarization and political uses of heritage. A central aim is to understand better if and how particular pasts are activated or omitted in contemporary populist far-right rhetoric, and the claims to which this has given rise. While polarization inevitably includes at least two poles, the rise of populist parties and movement on the far right has been identified as one of the most salient factors in contemporary polarization in Europe and the US (McCoy et al. 2018). It is also the pole from which some of the most dangerous claims to the past have emerged, fiercely rejecting visions of decolonized, equal and inclusive societies (de Cesari and Kaya 2019).

More than the claims to the past, the volume seeks to understand the conditions that make such claims possible. To ground this conversation, the chapters addressed both how heritage can be used as a tool by populist and far-right political actors to drive polarization , and how heritage can act as an underlying condition for polarization.

You can find it at: https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738485 (just send me an email at elisabeth.niklasson@abdn.ac.uk if you want the introduction chapter or have specific requests).

The chapters

Chiara de Cesari opens the conversation in Chapter 1 by addressing cultural fundamentalism in right-wing populist movements. Drawing on interviews with right-wing populist supporters in several European countries, she describes how heritage and memories of colonialism come to function as an axis around which a polarizing rhetoric revolves. Ultimately, she warns, this polarizing rhetoric has the potential to subject the minds and bodies of those deemed not to belong in Western societies to brutal forms of harm.

Cathrine Thorleifsson, who has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork among politicians and followers of far-right movements in Europe, continues in Chapter 2 by investigating how the past figures into political polarization in Hungary. She shows how the far-right Jobbik party has built a polarizing rhetoric around heritage symbols and ceremonies commemorating historic events. A polarizing rhetoric is generated by tapping into already-existing heritage and memories, re-aligning them to fit their narrative of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

In Chapter 3, Herdis and I take a closer look at the role of the past in the policies and budget proposals of three populist right parties sitting in Scandinavian parliaments. We argue that cultural heritage offers a more acceptable vocabulary for the populist right to rationalize the exclusion of ‘unwanteds’. More than a placeholder for ‘race’ targeting Muslims and minorities, the parties superficially dislocate heritage from their anti-immigration agenda. The past is kept innocent, providing a nostalgic contrast to dystopic visions of the present. This separation, we argue, and the caring image created by campaigning for archaeological sites, lends power to exclusionary arguments.

In Chapter 4, Rebecca Futo Kennedy brings the conversation back to the reinvention of the clash of civilizations after 9/11, where a Christian and liberal West is pitched against an Islamic and oppressive East. Starting from Zack Snyder’s popular film 300, she explores the academic, public and political understandings of ‘Western civilization’. Kennedy explains how ‘Western’ has come to replace ‘white’ without changing the underlying logic. She links this back to political polarization, noting how stereotypical ideas of Sparta can be found in the conflation between ancient Persia and modern Iran, and in the ideologies of white supremacist groups in the United States.

In Chapter 5, Reinhard Bernbeck dives into the politics of memory in contemporary Germany, where he examines the ‘polarization potential’ of multilayered heritage sites. He highlights the simplistic nature of Pierre Nora’s famous concept lieux de mémoire and instead uses the concepts of lieux de discorde and non-lieu, meaning material places that have a ‘dispute value’, and ‘nonplaces’ that are not meant to be remembered. Building on these, he articulates his own notion of lieux brisés, ‘broken places’, where material aspects and political connotations are jumbled together within a ‘shattered stratigraphy’. He strips the layers of two such places that are linked to Germany’s colonial past, the Halfmoon Camp in Wünsdorf, a Muslim prisoner-of-war camp from the First World War, and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

Continuing the conversation along the same lines, in Chapter 6, Alfredo González-Ruibal analyses the relationship between heritage and hatred in relation to the Spanish Civil War and the long dictatorship of General Franco, a cleavage that still drives political polarization in Spain. Turning to the Civil War memorial Valley of the Fallen, he shows how heritage in Spain can be used to produce resentment, and how a small act of defiance, such as when González-Ruibal himself removed a bouquet of flowers from Franco’s grave, can cause an outburst of hatred exposing old rifts between Nationalists and Republicans. He finds that when heritage is used by right-wing populist movements, it does not just reflect hatred, but also intensifies polarization in society as a whole.

In Chapter 7, Chip Colwell explores the relationship between belonging and political polarization in relation to genetic ancestry testing. By analysing the stories that emerge from direct-to-consumer DNA tests in the United States and how they are used to mediate identity, he argues that DNA is a ‘dangerous heritage’ that can lead to polarized pasts. He illustrates that no matter who gets tested: to claim a heritage by way of DNA tends to link old notions of racial purity to contemporary questions of belonging. The take-away message is that polarization may be driven by right-wing populism, but the logics and language they use, such as DNA, come straight from the cultural and political centre of Europe and the United States.

In Chapter 8, Anna Källén unravels the connections and clashes between archaeology, genomics and politics. She starts from an explosive news story about the results of a Swedish research project that claimed, based on ancient DNA (aDNA), that half the population in a Viking Age town called Sigtuna had been immigrants. The story was met with rage by anti-immigration activists and was eventually retracted and declared to be ‘fake news’. To understand why the story caused such havoc and how aDNA studies can turn into a dangerous heritage, Källén explains how the central idea of ‘mixing’ in aDNA research, combined with the tendency to apply cultural labels to ancient populations, can make it useful for political claims of belonging at both ends of the political spectrum.

In the concluding reflections in Chapter 9, Michael Herzfeld addresses the wider implications of heritage in times of political polarization. Moving between everyday expressions about the Greek language running ‘in the blood’ to the increasingly explicit policies of political parties and governments, he unpacks the meaning of the term ‘heritage’ in order to show that even benevolent liberals may, in their critiques of working-class mores, lapse into the same exclusionary rhetoric as that of right-wing populist leaders. Herzfeld argues that both sides feed into the emergence of a new and toxic nationalism, based on radically anti- intellectual and anti-social claims.