Trinidad Rico - Constructing Destruction: Heritage Narratives in the Tsunami City

CONSTRUCTING DESTRUCTION

CRITICAL CULTURAL HERITAGE SERIES

Series Editor: Beverley Butler

Part of the University College London Institute of Archaeology

Publications Series, published for the Institute by Routledge.

General Series Editor: Ruth Whitehouse

Founding Series Editor: Peter Ucko

The aim of this Critical Cultural Heritage Series is to define a new area of research and to produce a set of volumes that make a radical break with the existing canon of cultural heritage texts. In a fundamental shift of perspective, Jacques Derridas rallying call to restore heritage to dignity inspires both a reexamination of the core question of what constitutes cultural heritage and an engagement with the ethical issues that shape the possible futures of this research area.

The series is intended to be of transformative value in creating new agendas within cultural heritage discourse, using individual texts as building blocks. Central to the project is a realignment of cultural heritage studies through a wider scholarship committed to disrupting the Eurocentrism which underpins current theory and practice and through a contemporary politics of recognition that is concerned with articulating new, alternative, or parallel characterisations of heritage value. The aim is to centre cultural heritage studies within a wider concern for the preservation of human dignity and justice and to use these alternative discourses as a resource for future action, thereby creating a proactive, responsive, and just future for both cultural heritage studies and heritage practice.

Volume 12: Trinidad Rico, Constructing Destruction: Heritage Narratives in the Tsunami City

Volume 11: Anna Klln, Stones Standing: Archaeology, Colonialism, and Ecotourism in Northern Laos

Volume 10: Pierre Lemonnier, Mundane Objects: Materiality and Non-Verbal Communication

Volume 9: Shaila Bhatti, Translating Museums: A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology

Volume 8: Marilena Alivizatou, Intangible Heritage and the Museum: New Perspectives on Cultural Preservation

Volume 7: Charlotte L. Joy, The Politics of Heritage Management in Mali: From UNESCO to Djenn

Volume 6: Layla Renshaw, Exhuming Loss: Memory, Materiality, and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War

Volume 5: Katharina Schramm, African Homecoming: Pan-African Ideology and Contested Heritage

Volume 4: Mingming Wang, Empire and Local Worlds: A Chinese Model of Long-Term Historical Anthropology

Volume 3: Dean Sully, Ed., Decolonizing Conservation: Caring for Maori Meeting Houses outside New Zealand

Volume 2: Ferdinand de Jong and Michael Rowlands, Eds., Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa

Volume 1: Beverley Butler, Return to Alexandria: An Ethnography of Cultural Heritage Revivalism and Museum Memory

CONSTRUCTING DESTRUCTION

Heritage Narratives in the Tsunami City

Trinidad Rico

First published 2016

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Taylor & Francis

The right of Trinidad Rico to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Rico, Trinidad, author.

Title: Constructing destruction : heritage narratives in the tsunami city / Trinidad Rico.

Description: Walnut Creek, California : Left Coast Press, Inc., [2016] | Series: Critical cultural heritage series ; volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015042680| ISBN 9781629584379 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315520933 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cultural propertyIndonesiaNanggroe Aceh Darussalam. | Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (Indonesia)Antiquities. | Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (Indonesia)Cultural policy. | Tsunami reliefIndonesiaNanggroe Aceh Darussalam. | EthnologyIndonesiaNanggroe Aceh Darussalam.

Classification: LCC DS646.15.A8 R53 2016 | DDC 959.8/11dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042680

ISBN: 978-1-62958-437-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-52093-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Ryan Kenney

Contents

About the Author

In the early planning stages of this research project I was issued a collegiate warning about embarking on research in and about Aceh: there is not a tremendous amount of local knowledge about or even interest in what we could call tangible cultural heritage in Aceh. Believing this to be inadequate, and possibly unwarranted, this warning became a personal call to arms to interrogate the practices that shape a heritage landscape and its interlocutors in post-tsunami Banda Aceh and its environs. The resulting research project sought to document vernacularized constructions of post-tsunami heritage and a local preservation philosophy characterized by subtleness and therefore invisible to many, hinging on the identification and documentation of destruction and construction of heritage subjects and practices. But the intersection of post-tsunami devastation and the search for alternatives to already established practices and heritage concerns that were perceived to be harmless was difficult to convey, making communication difficult with fellow disciplinary colleagues in Aceh and elsewhere in Indonesia. I interpreted this as a sign of a shortage of critical debates on heritage practices in the region at the time, and navigated it by explaining often that, when it came to my research efforts, Indonesia adalah tempat yang sama bagusnya dengan tempat lain (Indonesia is as good a place to work as anywhere else). This volume argues that nothing could be further from the truth.