A more-than-representational understanding of heritage? : the 'past' and the politics of affect

This review examines debates situated at the intersection between heritage studies and geography, particularly those that revolve around more-than-representational theories. These theories, the review suggests, advance recent developments within the heritage field concerned with those senses of ‘the now’ so often left neglected by conventional understandings of heritage. The intellectual traditions underpinning this contribution draw primarily from the field of cultural geography, especially those that touch upon the tactile, experiential, aural, emotional and sonic. What this lends to the field of heritage studies is a vigorous and distinct way of conceptualising heritage in terms of the body, practice and performativity, together with an insistence that our engagements with it occur through a range of embodied dispositions and interactions. In other words, it insists that we, as heritage researchers, become more attentive to different possibilities for knowing and doing heritage: the ways in which it makes sense or answers back to a fuller range of people (after Thrift 2008)