A Chinese Discourse of Heritage

This Element presents an alternative approach to critical heritage studies by attending to forgotten or transformed cultural, historical ideas of heritage. It focuses on the Chinese term guji (古迹 ancient traces or vestiges), perceived today as the same as the modern concept of cultural heritage. After a macroanalysis of how guji is understood differently in contemporary and historical China, it comes to cultural-historical discourse analysis of guji recorded in the local gazetteers of Quzhou from the 1500s to the 1920s, revealing its way of categorization as boundary negotiation, and cultural modes of meaning-making and remembering, either with or without physical remains or a verifiable site. After a holistic view of this Chinese discourse as reflected in a particular guji, it concludes with a philosophical lens to highlight the alternative existence of heritage in the word guji and the uses of heritage as the uses of language.