This book is a bold, sweeping and imaginative argument on the centrality of 'heritage games' in the contemporary world... Each essay is brimming with insights, interesting facts and observations making them highly readable in their own right, or together.
Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University A work of ebullient imagination, zest, and wit, Heritage, Culture, and Politics in the Postcolony ... Read moreexplores the double life of heritage in the making of modern political identities-as both the fixed capital of national hegemony and the fluid currency of novel visions and claims. The book may evoke an aura of timeless homage, but heritage is also a riff in real time. In this acute exploration of its recent, postcolonial iterations, Daniel Herwitz shows that while its role remains much the same, its substance is constantly, ingeniously changing.
Jean Comaroff, Harvard University Herwitz's book is an important work in aesthetics, for the fate of aesthetics since the eighteenth century is remarkably similar to that of heritage. Both transmit tradition, yet they're also expected to usher in modernity, which signals a break from tradition. So long as these rivalrous demands cannot be reconciled, heritage and aesthetics remain objects of anxiety. In addition, they're inseparable from the histories of colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism, yet they're expected to offer political critiques of them. In the end, all these demands are analyzed by Herwitz in an engaging and eloquent fashion.
Michael Kelly, author of A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art Thoughtfully crafted and elegantly written, this book is pleasant reading for everyone interested in learning about the status of cultural studies around the world... Recommended. Choice Show Less