3 - Heritage as Knowledge: Time, Space, and Culture in Penang

Summary

INTRODUCTION

George Town's new status as a UNESCO World Heritage City has heightened the importance of heritage as a means to turn Penang into a major tourist destination and revitalise its economy. The commodification of heritage is however closely entwined with Malaysian nationalist discourses as heritage is often synonymously understood as “tradition”, a central narrative in the reconstructions of national identity. Against this background, heritage pursuits in the inner city of George Town have been characterised by claims on ethno-religious legacies and a call for the preservation of their associated buildings, sites, objects, skills and/or ways of life in order to ensure their survival into the future. In these pursuits, state, semi-quasi-state agencies, and capitalists often act together to impose heritage imaginations along the lines of mainstream ethnic distinctions between Malay, Chinese, Indian, and other communities. Affected civil and community groups have responded by invoking a myriad of multi-layered ethnic identities and/or shared cultural dimensions between ethnic groups as resistant culture. These dynamics have produced a wide array of imaginaries that not only reinforce but also challenge and complicate official ethnic categories in Malaysia. It is evident that both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forms of heritage imaginations are deeply encumbered by nationalist ethnic categories, the very forces which threaten to tear Malaysian society apart. There is hence an imperative to expand the meaning, goals and repercussions of heritage practices in Penang beyond ethnic legacies.

In this paper I wish to explore the promise of heritage in the hope of providing alternative pursuits to those driven by nationalist and market interests. In particular, I am interested in heritage as a mode of knowledge production that creates critical consciousness about time and society. For this, I draw on the conceptualisation of heritage as a practice which creates new forms of knowledge via re-assembling time and space or architecture. I begin with theoretical discussions to approach heritage as a mode of knowledge production with recourse to the past but which produces new ideas.