S1E8: Heritage Formation

Decolonization in Action Podcast

In this episode, Dr. Duane Jethro discusses the ways that heritage sites are constructed and re-imagined through the senses with special emphasis on post-Apartheid South Africa and Germany. Duane Jethro is a post-doctoral research fellow working in the Making Differences project at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. CARMAH was established in the Department for European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in partnership with the Museum of Natural History Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, as part of the research award for Sharon Macdonald’s Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. His research looks at the mobilisation of post-colonial and decolonial language in the context of contested street renaming, heritage commodification, as well as heritage aesthetics and social difference in Berlin. His book Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa is published by Bloomsbury Academic. The book references the pathbreaking, sensuous work of the historian and journalist Jacob Dlamini. See his book Native Nostalgia, here. It also frames South Africa’s fraught memory politics. Some of the organisations doing important black activist work in the city, especially in regards to colonial legacies marked in street names and sites: Africavenir - http://www.africavenir.org/ Berlin Post-Kolonial - http://berlin-postkolonial.de/en/home-2 Each One Teach One - https://www.eoto-archiv.de/ Institute for Schwarze Mensche in Deutschland - http://isdonline.de/ Image was photographed by edna bonhomme.