Dialogues with coloniality

the limits of heritage in subaltern contexts

Abstract

Faced with the scenario of profound transformations in the identification processes of various social groups, particularly with respect to the possibilities of building “new” social subjects in subaltern terms, this article addresses how “coloniality” is discussed through the processes of heritage preservation. It is our interest to analyze the complex processes that take place between the heritage institutions — still fixed to the idea of territory and, particularly, of the nation — and the subjects and social groups that, in movement and in attempts to decolonize, “make heritage” through local, localized, transterritorialized and displaced practices. In the first section, the patrimonial narratives and actions promoted in the international field for the Latin American region are taken up again and attention is paid to the tensions surrounding the monumental tangible heritage and intangible heritage in Argentina, in a country historically marked in its heritage sphere by the nineteenth-century imaginary of “progress”. In the second section, emphasis is placed on the intangible heritage processes activated by the Afro-descendant population in Buenos Aires, crossed by the materialization of the coloniality of power and covert racialization.