Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

In 1938, at the dawn of a war that took the hate against the Other to the extreme, Virginia Woolf celebrates women and their being “outsiders,” namely outside of the patriarchal logic of power, with this sentence: “as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” Sixty years later, the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai proposes to rethink “monopatriotism” through the help of new patriotisms, like women’s, disables’, or scientists’. Through these “transnations,” or “postnational imaginaries,” his hope is to overcome the inability of the nation-states to tolerate diversity. Given this context, it is useful to analyse the role that gender relations play in the heritage making process - conceived as a powerful tool of identity building - and to question the male dominant heritage discourse. Through the World Heritage List, UNESCO is aiming to present an inclusive heritage, blurring the boundaries at regional, national, and international level. Despite often mentioning the rights and values of minorities, the nominations – and the consequent interpretation and management of the sites – often fail to mention women and risk generating a “disinheritance” by marginalising the role of women and their contributions to history. How could gender equality be integrated into policies and practices related to cultural heritage interpretation and conservation? Could gender studies be the tool through which we reimagine the world, by unveiling the power relations that bring to the construction of the Other par excellence, i.e. woman?