INTRODUCTION

Tackling the overall theme of ‘appropriating the past’ immediately raises two issues: the first is who is doing the appropriating, on what basis, and within what worldview; who is included in that appropriation and who is excluded; and what are the mechanisms and decision-making criteria and, in Foucault's terms, the disciplinary technologies or mechanisms that create and perpetuate that inclusion and exclusion (e.g., Foucault 1995 [1977]: 195–228; see also Hooper-Greenhill 1992: 190)? The second issue is, what do we mean by ‘the past’ – is it something that is finished and complete in a linear framework of time, something that really is ‘past’ and therefore can only be ‘interpreted’ and ‘known’ objectively, or is it something within which connections can still be experienced, within a non-linear or circular conception of time, and in that sense actually still subjectively ‘present’? Clearly all these issues are concerned with authority: who has it, why do they have it, how do they have it, and how does it play out when those who are excluded challenge that authority? This is now a key strand in much heritage research: the tensions between ‘authorised’–‘hegemonic’ and ‘alternative’–‘subaltern’ forms of heritage discourse, between universal and particularist claims to heritage, or between ‘expert’ and ‘lay’ knowledge (e.g., Smith 2006, Robertson 2012).