Chapter 2 - The limitless concept: the new heritage paradigm and its relation to space

Abstract

Heritage: this ancient and beautiful word was originally linked to the family, to the economic and legal structures of a stable society rooted in space and time. It has been qualified by several adjectives (genetic, natural, historic…) that have turned it into a «nomadic» concept that, today, still follows a diverse and resounding path (Choay, online –original ed. of 1992–). Heritage is neither natural nor eternal, but a social construct that appeared at the dawn of modernity as a kind of lay religion. It served to provide an aura of sacredness to speeches concerning identity, mainly of a national or regional nature, but also local, through representative relics that have some kind of metonymic relationship with the perceived cultural externality, on the time plane (the past, as a time beyond time, unreachable) of the supposedly indomitable, uncontaminated nature […] and its genius and exceptionality (Prats, 2006: 72).