Heritage without Heirs? : tangible and religious cultural heritage of the Vlach minority in Europe in the context of an interdisciplinary research project : (contribution to the subject)

摘要

The revival of themes concerning UNESCO cultural heritage, which emerged at the end of the 20th century, poses many questions in reference to the need, essence, and discourse on the subject as well as are-as beyond it. One of these questions seems to be the cultural heritage of nationals communities in Europe, which were doomed to assimilation, persecution or even oblivion in the second part of the 20th century. In recent times, the critical research trend on cultural heritage has pointed out that the essence of heritage is a choice which transforms cultural achievements into “our heritage” – the areas of culture that we choose and often protect and pass on to the next generations. However, beyond “our protection,” there is a realm of “oblivion” which may include “alien” tangible and intangible objects about which we do not care, which do not matter to us and which we do not want to pass on to our heirs. It is a space of all forms of “our” degradation and marginalization of an “alien legacy,” a space where we often let this legacy become forgotten. It can be stated that the example of the Vlachs perfectly illustrates the complex processes related to cultures which were overwhelmingly subjugated by their neighbours and lost the fight. A neighbour, usually representing the culture of the majority, was stronger culturally, economically, politically and often militarily, too. The following article focuses on the phenomena which classical anthropology used to inspect, claiming that its role is to protect what is fading into oblivion. Thus, the analysis of the Vlach culture presented herein refers to a much wider reflection, which is a synergy of ethnography, ethnology and cultural anthropology, and to the critical studies on heritage which are emerging in Poland. This presentation will analyse the principal problems concerning research on the cultural heritage of displaced communities in Europe from the perspective of the Vlach minority. Based on the field research conducted in several countries of Europe (e.g. Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland), I will present the main classification of the Vlach tangible heritage with special attention paid to the most important cultural monuments, including religious building developments (churches, icons, small religious architecture). I will portray the difficulties found in protecting this heritage and the role of cultural institutions in its preservation and exposition.