Re-scripting colonial heritage

Abstract

This paper explores alternative meanings and appropriations of the cate- gory colonial heritage. How do different categories of people practice and appropri- ate spaces that have been labelled as colonial heritage? How are these formely colo- nial spaces (re-) appropriated, contested, commodifed, in contemporary societies? My interest here is strongly influenced by Ann Stoler’s work on Imperial Debris, ruins and ruination (Stoler, 2008). Building upon her argument, I argue for a critical ethnography of how colonial spaces are practiced, experienced, inhabited, re- scripted, by multiple agencies and agents, in contemporary times. Based in ethno- graphic research, this text explores processes of labelling and circulating through spaces in Melaka (West Malaysia), explores linkages between nostalgia and alterna- tive notions of heritage, and questions the local meanings ascribed to heritage (trans- latable as warisan, in bahasa melayu). Building upon Rosaldo’s (1989) notion of imperial- ist nostalgia and Hertzfeld’s (2005) concept of structural nostalgia, I end by discussing the production and consumption of colonial nostalgia in contemporary times. Keywords: circulation, heritagization, nostalgia, space, tourism, Eurasians, Malaysia