Against authenticity

Authenticity has long been a lynchpin of our thinking about heritage. It is a threshold question as to whether we even consider something to be heritage. Because authenticity is a threshold question, we have often assumed it and its relevance. Scholarship on authenticity therefore focuses on how it is created and (re)negotiated, seldom scrutinising the work authenticity does. This article unpacks the work of authenticity, ultimately arguing against it and attempting to imagine a heritage world without it. In order to do so, this article maps out the different types of work authenticity does in relation to heritage, and then recasts the discussion in relation to Walter Benjamin’s own views about authenticity in relation to aura. As I show in the article, Walter Benjamin’s work was initially read as apolitical, which prevented us from understanding that he himself was very critical of authenticity and the work it did. Therefore, our reliance on Benjamin to justify authenticity is unwarranted, and we need to reimagine whether authenticity is still (or ever was) a useful concept in how we imagine and manage heritage and the discourses around it

Cultural heritage and interculturality: a call to action

This article explores the possible relationships between critical heritage studies and interculturality. It argues that interculturality offers a call to action and normative commitments that is welcome to advance critical heritage studies. The article examines the intersections across the two fields using the ideas of normative engagement, status of the two fields in liberal political discourse, and the notions of recognition and redistribution as goals of historically oppressed groups. The article uses the examples of Indigenous and Afro-descendant heritage to connect heritage to the work of interculturality in attempting to create and promote better polities. The article then discusses some of the potentials and pitfalls of closer alignment between the fields of interculturality and critical heritage studies

Interpretation and the Constraints on International Courts

This paper argues that methodologies of interpretation do not do what they promise – they do not constrain interpretation by providing neutral steps that one can follow in finding out a meaning of a text – but nevertheless do their constraining work by being part of what can be described as the legal practice

Confederate Monuments and International Law

This article engages with the controversy around the removal of Confederate Monuments in theUS, from the perspective of international law. While the issue is prima facie domestic, international lawoffers a laboratory to consider the multiple tensions a step removed from their current charged andemotional environment. The article argues that, for the most part, international law supports maintainingthe status quo with respect to the monuments, particularly through its preference for all-or-nothingresponses. However, read from the perspective of transitional justice, greater nuance and pragmatism isadded to the debate, leading to more constructive responses that can actually live up to internationallaw's promises with respect to the fields affected by the Confederate Monuments controversy

Rights Litigation Piggybacking: Legal Mobilization Strategies in LGBTIQ International Human Rights Jurisprudence

This Article examines the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex,and Queer (LGBTIQ) movement’s engagement with international humanrights adjudication from the perspective of its borrowing from orpiggybacking on the strategies and tactics of other international socialmovements for historically disadvantaged groups, particularly race,gender, and indigenous people. Piggybacking has shaped the rights goalsof the LGBTIQ movement, which are then translated into the languageof international human rights law. In this translation process, certainobjectives get foregrounded at the expense of others, and the movementessentializes itself in the pursuit of strategic gains, often to lastingunintended consequences that harm the movement itself. In mappingthese trends, this Article argues that social movement advocates woulddo well to be more mindful of the piggybacking’s strategic costs,particularly as new international rights-oriented social movementsemerge in areas like disability rights and the rights of older persons

A third way of thinking about cultural property

The article argues that the dichotomy between nationalism and internationalism with respect to cultural property, while formative, has outlived its utility, and in many respects compromised the viability of the public good it aims to safeguard. Focused on the example of cultural property in international law, this article argues for more community-centric forms of governance, beyond the interests of states and an undefined “international.” It extrapolates the lessons from cultural property to other forms of resource governance in international law