Our Pain, their Heritage Project: From the Palmyra Moment to Violence and the City

Abstract

Cultural heritage sites in Syria have been weaponized, targeted, bombed, looted, and destroyed. Since the start of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011, images of destruction, as in the case of Palmyra with its celebrity status, have attracted significant attention from archaeologists, architects, and journalists to academics, politicians, and art curators. This interest led to the emergence of an "industry" focused on the protection and reconstruction of cultural heritage sites during times of violence, war, and conflict. Very often, cultural heritage projects have failed to engage with the Syrian people, turning our pain and trauma into a "heritage project." Furthermore, most of these projects have focused on selective monumental heritage sites, while neglecting the inhabitants in and around these sites. They also failed to look at the cities as a living urban whole with their narrowed focus on the monumental heritage site. In this paper therefore, I ask two questions. First, how has Palmyra been used and abused as a stage for global performances by various foreign powers? And second, how can we convert the one-off traumatic rupture of cultural heritage sites and its cinematic image of destruction, as in Palmyra in 2015, into an understanding of slow and fast violence that takes place in cities?