Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD): Why Heritage Is Not What You Think
Laurajane Smith has argued that heritage is not something material as we commonly think, but rather a discourse that selects what is worth preserving. She called this the Authorized Heritage Discourse (ADH).
Antonis Chaliakopoulos
Antonis is an archaeologist with a passion for museums and heritage and a keen interest in aesthetics and the reception of classical art. He holds an MSc in Museum Studies from the University of Glasgow and a BA in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens (NKUA), where he is currently working on his PhD.
Who decides what is worthy of preservation? Laurajane Smith has argued that political and cultural elites shape the way we understand what heritage is by “enforcing” a certain discourse that selectively judges what is worth-preserving and what is not. This power dynamic is central to what Smith identifies as the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD). Let's dive in.
Laurajane Smith’s Understanding of Heritage
Laurajane Smith is a Heritage and Museum Studies scholar at the Australian National University. Particularly influential among Smith's publications is her edited volume titled Uses of Heritage (2006), where she examined the politics of heritage and what she termed “Authorized Heritage Discourse”.
In this work, Smith argued that (Cultural) Heritage is not the material monuments with which we usually associate it.
“… heritage not so much as a ‘thing’, but as a cultural and social process, which engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present” Smith 2006, 2
Instead, Heritage is a discourse crafted by and enforced from the elites to control the narrative around what deserves to be preserved and what not. What is to be praised as high art and cut off from its original context and community and what should be devalued and treated as lowly art. Smith termed this discourse “Authorized Heritage Discourse”.
“… heritage is used to construct, reconstruct and negotiate a range of identities and social and cultural values and meanings in the present. Heritage is a multilayered performance – be this a performance of visiting, managing, interpretation or conservation – that embodies acts of remembrance and commemoration while negotiating and constructing a sense of place, belonging and understanding in the present.” Smith 2006, 3
If you are interested in how heritage works, then you may also be interested in learning how societies shape their collective memory or how nationalism adopts and creates symbols and myths to foster a common identity.
The Idea of Discourse
Smith is using the term “discourse” in the way first presented by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault’s discourse is a system of representation that shapes how we understand and talk about topics, ultimately creating the objects of our knowledge. For Foucault, discourses are practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.
Smith applies this Foucauldian understanding to heritage, arguing that the Authorized Heritage Discourse doesn't simply describe pre-existing heritage objects but actively constructs what counts as heritage. Through this discourse, certain narratives, values, and material objects are privileged while others are marginalized or rendered invisible.
As with Foucault’s political discourse, the power of AHD lies in its ability to appear natural and self-evident as well as its ability to naturalize certain ideas about what constitutes heritage. Through this process, AHD works to legitimize the power of the elite and maintain the established hierarchy.
Smith believes that AHD’s origins stretch back to nineteenth-century Western values and cultural concerns. However, AHD is not only found in the so-called West but “in the authorial voices of the upper middle and ruling classes of European educated professionals and elites” (Smith 2006, 28).
The Characteristics of AHD
In Smith’s own words:
“[AHD] privileges monumentality and grand scale, innate artefact/site significance tied to time depth, scientific/aesthetic expert judgement, social consensus and nation building. It is a self-referential discourse, which has a particular set of consequences.” Smith 2006, 11
This means that as a discourse, AHD uses certain mechanisms and is looking for specific characteristics in order to describe certain things as heritage. In short:
- First, it emphasizes materiality and monumentality, focusing on grand structures rather than intangible cultural practices.
- Second it presupposes that artefacts and sites have an innate value that is connected to their antiquity, their “time depth”.
- Third, it privileges expert knowledge and aesthetic judgments over local or indigenous values.
- Fourth, it often presents heritage as static and unchanging rather than dynamic and evolving.
Through these mechanisms, AHD creates a framework that determines which aspects of the past are deemed worthy of preservation and official recognition.
Bibliography
Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9780203602263