Abstract
The chapter addresses questions of terminology and criteria of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme (MoW) in the context of other UNESCO heritage programmes. It starts with reflecting shortly the term “heritage” and its derivations. The following sub-chapter presents novelties on the prehistory of MoW, namely on the introduction of its name, and on early relations between MoW and World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Finally, the chapter makes proposals for future research concentrating on the critical, contextual and comparative analysis of key terms and criteria of MoW and other heritage programmes. It proposes to put such research into the framework of comparative conceptual history and links such considerations to similar projects in the early years of UNESCO. To substantiate the need for such future research, the article chooses examples from the Guidelines (2002, see Edmondson, Memory of the World: general guidelines to safeguard documentary heritage [Doc. No: CII-95/WS-11rev], UNESCO, Paris, 2002) and the (Draft) Guidelines (2017, see MoW Guidelines Review Group, UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. General guidelines, approved text December, UNESCO, Paris, 2017) as basic texts.
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Notes
- 1.
The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments, 1931 (ICOMOS 2011), does not use “heritage” at all. In the Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, 1964 (ICOMOS 1965), the term “heritage” plays still a subservient role mentioning only once “architectural heritage”. The Venice Charter is dominated by terms like “conservation of monuments”.
- 2.
“Heritage Studies may now be recognized not merely as a cross-disciplinary research field but rather as a trans-disciplinary project that explores and brings together methods as well as intellectual arguments and concerns from within a range of disciplines and increasingly making them its own” (Stig Sørensen 2013, p. xvi f.).
- 3.
Harvey 2008, an interesting article, sees the constructedness of the modern concept of heritage, but not the impact of international organizations like UNESCO on its construction.
- 4.
The precise citation would have been “Les archives de notre mémoire” (Baudelaire 1976, p. 618) (from Salon de 1859).
- 5.
In the 1980s, Glissant began to work on intellectual concepts on “the world”, for a global thinking against globalization. This included the creation of neologisms like “Tout-monde” (Glissant 1993). Glissant 1997 contains further variations on “monde” like the chapter “Le cri du monde” or the term “Chaos-monde” (p. 16). The relations between Glissant, the UNESCO Courrier and “Mémoire du monde” and its intellectual context need further research.
- 6.
The English version was a free translation: “In response to many requests from readers, in December the Unesco Courier will be launching a new feature devoted to the outstanding historical landmarks in art and architecture and the exceptional natural sites which constitute the common heritage of humanity” (Anon. 1990, p. 42).
- 7.
See Russell in this volume.
- 8.
The Editorial does not name its author. At the top of the UNESCO Courier were now Bahgat Elnadi and Adel Rifaat (Egypt), after Glissant had left by the end of 1988.
- 9.
The term “Monumenta historica” for series of editions of historical sources goes back to the nineteenth century. See also the chapter “Artefacts as metaphors in history and memory” in Lowenthal 2015, pp. 401–404.
- 10.
A photo (p. 5) shows parts of the Ambrosian Library, Milan, which was destroyed during World War II. This can be seen as a pre-glimpse of MoW’s feature Lost Memory. A note on p. 12 describes not only the loss but also a project to cope with it, similar to those to come in the early years of MoW: “In February 1988, a fire in the Leningrad Library of the Soviet Academy of Sciences destroyed an estimated 400,000 volumes, and a further 3.6 million books and documents were damaged by fire and water. Unesco has helped the library to collect microfilm versions of many of the works that were destroyed and has advised on drying and restoration”.
- 11.
Therein are more interesting articles on our matter than the ones I have cited, also under the aspect of terminology, e.g. “scattered heritage” (p. 12) for “dispersed manuscripts”, or the title “Manuscripts de monde” (p. 12) (in the English version: “From the world’s archives”, p. 12) for a collection of reports from different archives, or Giuseppe Tavani’s article: “The quest for authenticity” (pp. 13–15).
- 12.
Including the care for Lost Memory, see fn. 10.
- 13.
Of course, the scope of such a project could include all UNESCO heritage programmes right from the start, giving them all equal attention, but it may be easier to get this going, if one focuses on one of them at the beginning, that is MoW in our case.
- 14.
“Organizations like UNESCO and the OECD […] provide an interesting, only recently discovered experimental ground for the study of the practical functioning, or mal-functioning, of multilinguality. […] Here, the need to translate, in this case abstract legal, economic, scientific and sociopolitical terms, constitutes a permanent challenge. It is felt more acutely by non-native English speakers, but it is by no means unknown to native English speakers. There is a danger of being misled here by the apparent display of linguistic uniformity that is produced through the common use of English terms in international organizations. In fact, the superficial uniformity of terms may often hide a plurality of different national concepts that will resurface as soon as it comes to interpreting what the participants actually meant while negotiating or consenting to a document in English” (Steinmetz and Freeden 2017, p. 15).
- 15.
Raymond Klibansky made the proposal to create an analytical dictionary for UNESCO in 1950: “Anyone who has had occasion to observe the course of the international diplomatic conferences of recent years will be struck by the recurrence of certain characteristic misunderstandings. An analysis of these misunderstandings shows that, apart from the paramount and obvious factor of conflicting political philosophies, they are — to some extent at least — due to the fact that, in the various languages, terms which seem similar differ strongly in their significance” (cited after McKeon 1957, pp. 254–255).
- 16.
Rokkan 1951 presents just a selection of the list of “Texts on Democracy and Its Role in Ideological Conflicts”. But even that contains 184 titles – from Aristotle to Stalin.
- 17.
In these Guidelines “integrity” is not yet a criterion for inscription, but just an ethical task for safeguarding documents (p. 7).
- 18.
- 19.
Russell and Winkworth (2009, p. 1) explain (not: define) “significance” very shortly and partly by “values”: “What is Significance? ‘Significance’ refers to the values and meanings that items and collections have for people and communities”.
- 20.
The OED online (2018) defines “significance” (2.): “The quality of being worthy of attention; importance, consequence”, and “value” (II.6.): “Worth based on esteem; quality viewed in terms of importance, usefulness, desirability, etc.”.
- 21.
See Edmondson “Reviewing” in this volume. The precise title of the inscription is “Documentary Collection ´Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara: from the originals manuscripts of its adolescence and youth to the campaign Diary in Bolivia´”.
- 22.
Prodan (2017) reflects the complexity of “access”, e.g. cultural differences in using modern media, so the contexts in which the carriers appear.
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Jordan, L. (2020). Terminology and Criteria of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme: New Findings and Proposals for Research. In: Edmondson, R., Jordan, L., Prodan, A.C. (eds) The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. Heritage Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18441-4_20
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