Mads Daugbjerg

Pacifying War Heritage: Patterns of Cosmopolitan Nationalism at a Danish Battlefield Site

Former battlefields are often held to be important nodes in national iconographies. This article offers an analysis of a Danish battlefield site which has historically been taken to epitomise fervently ethnic national qualities. The article traces significant shifts in the ways its relevance has been and currently is being imagined and expressed. The heritage and commemorative practices conducted here are analysed as an ongoing symbolic struggle between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ conceptions of nation. It is argued that a third mode of identification, termed ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’, seems to be on the rise here. In such an understanding, the war site becomes ‘pacified’, i.e. symbolically associated with qualities of peace‐keeping and humanitarianism. Importantly, however, such agendas do not simply erase the site’s national significance but are analysed, rather, as re‐imbuing the site with a new strand of Danishness—now taken to entail cosmopolitan and reconciliatory values.

Patchworking the past: materiality, touch and the assembling of ‘experience’ in American Civil War re-enactment

This article investigates the power of things and materials in the context of historical re-enactment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among costumed re-enactors reinvigorating the American Civil War, it explores participants’ close connections to specific objects and ensembles of objects and the crucial role awarded to ‘experience’ and ‘touch’ in this genre of relating to the past. It is argued that three interrelated propositions derived from my analysis allow a better understanding of this popular heritage practice: (1) Re-enactment can be understood as a human-material ‘patchworking’ process, (2) Re-enactment comprises a ‘holistic’ enterprise and (3) A key motivation in re-enactment derives from its ‘unfinishedness’. By attending to these dimensions through a detailed analysis that takes the role of objects and their experiential potential seriously as going beyond ‘representation’, I argue that the re-enacted Civil War serves as an often implicit and non-verbal – but, precisely, enacted – critique of conventional approaches to learning about and exhibiting history and heritage, such as those epitomised by the conventional museum.

Introduction: Heritage Gone Global. Investigating the Production and Problematics of Globalized Pasts

Taylor and Francis GHAN_A_558585.sgm 10.1080/027 7206 2011.558585 Hist ry and Anthropology 0275-7206 (pri t)/1477-2612 (online) Article 2 11 & Francis 0000June 2011 D MadsDaugbje g mads.d gbje g@hum.au.dk Wherever one looks today, “heritage” abounds. Whether conceived as material or immaterial legacies, as a sphere of commercial potential or as an anchor of belonging, references to heritage are omnipresent across sectors. Implying certain relationships between history, memory and identity (Lowenthal 1994), heritage is a set of presentday ideas and practices referring to and utilizing the past. As such, it has come to be valued as a versatile medium of social, cultural and political recognition, as underpinning claims for rights, as well as a potential source of cultural exchange and economic and touristic development (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998; AlSayyad 2001; Timothy & Boyd 2003; Dallen 2007). Traditionally, the concept of heritage has been closely tied to the nation state. Indeed, in some languages, most notably those of Latin origin, the word itself (for example, the French “Patrimoine”) shares etymological roots with terms for the homeland. Increasingly, however, heritage and memory are being tied to supranational claims and understandings (Bianchi & Boniface 2002; Macdonald 2003; Greenspan 2005; Levy & Sznaider 2006; Meskell 2009a). This Special Issue of History and Anthropology addresses this “global” turn. It sets out to analyse and discuss the ways in which heritage issues have gained increasing attention in a world of globalization, and how certain aspects of heritage have come to be seen and practised as transnational, cosmopolitan or “world heritage”—while still, in many cases, being strongly tied to and interweaved with local, national or ethnic understandings. Referring, of course, to the past, heritage in its current shape as a medium of identity politics and economic potential is nevertheless a rather novel phenomenon. Timothy Mitchell, in his analysis of the “making of the nation” in colonial Egypt, spells out the

Becoming a warring nation: the Danish ‘military moment’ and its repercussions

ABSTRACT This introduction sets the frame for the section’s four articles, all themed on contemporary developments in Denmark in the wake of the country’s involvement in the ‘coalition’ wars of recent decades. During this period, Danish governments have adopted a so-called ‘activist’ foreign policy, a key element of which is the increased utilization of its armed forces in operations across the globe. These processes are interesting, not least because they run counter to earlier conceptions in and of Denmark, a country that has been known, for long, as a bastion of politically liberal stances, widespread pacifism and a strong foreign policy tradition of non-involvement. We outline this Danish road from ‘adaptation’ to ‘activism’, arguing for a need for a critical, qualitatively based research focus on the social and cultural repercussions of this peculiar ‘military moment’ in Denmark. The four articles that make up the themed section are written on the basis of ethnographic case studies that seek to contribute to such a wider discussion.

Re-enacting the past: vivifying heritage ‘again’

What do the Mexican tourism concept Caminata Nocturna (running since 2004), the British Battle of Orgreave event staged by Jeremy Deller in 2001, Joshua Oppenheimer’s prize-winning 2012 documentary The Act of Killing and the international grassroots Society for Creative Anachronism have in common? In all of them – although for different reasons – people engage in re-enactment: they utilise, dramatise and revitalise selected events, episodes or even atmospheres of the past, whether those pasts concern illegal crossings of the US–Mexican border, the violent clashes of the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike, the massacres of supposed communists in Indonesia during the 1960s or the arts and skills of pre-seventeenth-century Europe. This special issue deals with processes of re-enacting as they relate to heritage. Re-enactment as activity and concept implies a number of challenges to conventional understandings of ‘heritage’ and many of the taken-for-granted qualities and assumptions usually associated with the term, such as fixity, conservation, ‘listing’, ownership or authenticity, to name but a few. The contributions in this volume work, we hope, to unsettle many such ‘givens’, forcing us to critically interrogate the scope of conventional heritage thinking; to ask whether heritage can be thought and analysed, instead, along lines of impermanence, performance, flux, innovation and creativity – and if so, how such lines of scrutiny might afford new possibilities and potential identifications within heritage work, while at the same time acknowledging a set of new or recast problems and issues not easily dealt with when ‘heritage’ is approached through the lens of re-enactment. Re-enactment is hardly an understudied phenomenon these days, and the present volume must be seen as a contribution to a growing field of research that spans several disciplines, including history, anthropology, performance studies and film studies (for some important, recent contributions, see Agnew and Lamb 2009; McCalman and Pickering 2010; Jackson and Kidd 2011; Magelssen and JusticeMalloy 2011; Schneider 2011; Kalshoven 2012; ten Brink and Oppenheimer 2012). What we have sought to provide in the present context is an open, curious and, importantly, cross-disciplinary set of studies and explorations of re-enactment as practice, problem and/or potential, and relate these to the field and insights of heritage studies. Why and how, one may ask, should re-enacting and re-enactment be seen as a particularly pertinent field of study within heritage studies just now? Following from our identification of the ‘challenging’ nature of re-enactment, above, we would identify four clusters of reasons for this:

Not Mentioning the Nation: Banalities and Boundaries at a Danish War Heritage Site

Former sites of war, and particularly those which have been elevated to icons of noble defeat, traditionally serve as powerful national signifiers. At the Danish field of Dybbøl, however, a seemingly novel anti‐national or cosmopolitan stance is emerging. This paper investigates contemporary tendencies to silence or not mention the nation at Dybbøl, a site formerly associated with profound pro‐Danish and anti‐German sentiments. So where did the nation go? Basing my analysis on ethnographic field studies of heritage practices and the perspectives of staff and visitors at Dybbøl, I argue that despite its attempted erasure, the nation is still firmly there, inescapably present, lingering in the very materiality of the war site. I draw upon Michael Billig’s notion of banal nationalism to account for the unreflective ways in which the national significance of the site is asserted even in the face of current cosmopolitan changes.

Heroes Once Again: Varieties of Danish ‘Activism’ in Conflated Commemorations of the War in Afghanistan and the Prusso-Danish War of 1864

ABSTRACT This article addresses a peculiar historical moment in contemporary Denmark, a nation coming to grips with its increased involvement in the ‘coalition’ wars of recent decades, especially in Afghanistan. It explores how and why, in a Scandinavian society previously conceived as a bastion of tolerance, humanitarianism and pacifism, a new preoccupation with and support for war participation – often referred to as Danish ‘activism’ – seems to be on the rise. I analyse public commemoration settings, focusing especially on events connected to the 150th anniversary of the War of 1864 in which Denmark was defeated by Prussia and Austria. This major anniversary in 2014 coincided with the withdrawal of Danish combat troops from Afghanistan. Utilising theories of time and temporality, I explore how the two conflicts – both ‘remote’ from the Danish public; one in time, the other in space – came symbiotically to inform the interpretations of each other.

The ‘distant war’ up close and personal: approximating Afghanistan at the Danish Arsenal Museum

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the crafting of trustworthy knowledge about war as tensioned between ideals of distance and proximity. I draw on field material assembled at the Danish Arsenal Museum in Copenhagen over the spring and summer of 2013. In an exhibition entitled The Distant War, set up in close cooperation with the Danish armed forces and with actual involvement of Afghanistan veterans, the museum immersed visitors in a three-dimensional, hands-on experience of ‘being there’ in the midst of the on-going conflict in the troubled Helmand Province, the main area of the Danish military engagement. This ‘approximated Afghanistan’ clearly appealed to visitors and involved them in ways that more conventional exhibitions often fail to do. At the same time, it relied on certain and, I argue, reconfigured renderings of authority, sidelining or even actively hiding academic (‘distanced’) expertise, instead relying on the first-hand accounts and experiences of the war witnesses themselves. Its gripping cinematic communication styles served to underpin particular knowledges and specific kinds of expertise that depend on getting ‘as close’ as possible to the ‘distant war’. The article contextualizes and scrutinizes the crafting of war knowledge in Copenhagen, including its experiential foundation. I argue that in the celebration of (particular forms of) proximity, cultural mediations such as this one may also serve to install new distances and cement a number of existing ones.

Kulturarvens grundspænding mellem nationale og globale strømme

Resume Artiklen diskuterer den ”grundspaending” mellem det nationale og det globale, som kulturarven som begreb og konkret praksis finder betydning i. Et indledende eksempel fra forfatterens feltarbejde ved den historiske slagmark Dybbol lige nord for den dansk/tyske graense demonstrerer, hvordan steder og hojtideligheder, der tidligere blev opfattet som staerkt nationale, i stigende grad tilskrives transnationale eller sagar universelle vaerdier. Herefter sporer og diskuterer forfatteren forbindelserne mellem national identitet, arkaeologien og kulturarven, med reference til 1800tallets nationalromantiske vending. Saerlig opmaerksomhed tildeles den tyske praeromantiker Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), hvis tanker om sammenhaengen mellem folk, nation og kultur fik afgorende betydning for toneangivende danske skikkelser som Adam Oehlenschlager og N.F.S. Grundtvig. Forstaelsen af kulturarven, som voksede frem i 1800-tallets Danmark, var knyttet til erfaringen af den krisestemning, som blandt andet tabet af Norge 1814 og de slesvigske krige 1848-51 og 1864 hensatte nationen i. Dansk kultur og kulturarv blev opfattet som noget grundlaeggende skrobeligt og truet, en praemis som stadig kendetegner megen kulturarvspraksis. Men parallelt med denne grundlaeggende nationale konnotation i kulturarvsbegrebet peger forfatteren pa nutidige bevaegelser, som peger i en tilsyneladende modsat retning, hvor genstande, steder, monumenter og traditioner i stigende grad soges knyttet til universelle og kosmopolitiske dagsordner og medfolgende vaerdisaet, som det ses mest rendyrket hos UNESCO. Artiklen diskuterer den nyere universalistiske kulturarvstaenkning gennem en kritisk analyse af UNESCOs verdensarvsbegreb. Der argumenteres for, at man under verdensorganisationens diplomatiske og inkluderende sprogbrug aner en relativistisk og romantisk kulturforstaelse, der pa paradoksal vis fastholder de enkelte ”communities” og kulturer i afsondret og ubrydelig specificitet. Artiklens analytiske strategi er at adressere relationerne og spaendingerne mellem de nationale og globale forstaelser og niveauer, og at undersoge de lag af fortolkning og forhandling, som er med til at fylde kulturarven med mening og vaerdi. Overordnet er ambitionen at saette sporgsmalstegn ved relevansen af kategoriske opdelinger af kulturarv i geografiske trin eller koncentriske cirkler, opdelt i fx lokale, nationale og globale niveauer, og i stedet sla til lyd for en kulturanalyse, der interesserer sig for, hvordan sadanne kategorier fremelskes, forhandles og far effekt.