Patrimonialization as a symptom of society lack of trust in the future

Yesterday an old industrial mining landscape in north of France (Pas-de-calais) became a UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE. It joined the rest of the 953 others sites sharing an exceptionnal and universal cultural value, like the Versailles palace or the Statue of liberty.
check the list


This choice is very interesting as it is very symptomatic of our time and our worrying infatuation for patrimonialization (953 sites ?).

It also shows the drift in the patrimonial object's nature. They're not spectacular natural or architectural pieces anymore, they can be ugly and depressing flat landscapes because we now try to put value into somethingelse, something new we're scared of loosing and therefore choose to cherish in our past : the structuring power of industry, the strong feeling of identity it manages to give to a whole region, the number of jobs and the social community it creates, the ingenieering perfomances it achieves.

It is in a way hard to understand the UNESCO decision, as it had already saved for posterity the english mining landscapes in Cornwall and in the west of Devon, also the one in Blaenavon, etc. Does humanity need to remember all the mining sites of every country ?    

Of course this industrial french site has a lot of historical value, old machines, underground galleries, deep mine shafts, specific landscapes, and strong social community. But it feels a bit extreme to bring it to the world level, and not just keep it on a local scale. 

Morever, this mining area in north of France is the national reference for the most terrible environnement and working conditions since Emile Zola wrote Germinal  in 1885, telling the story of Etienne Lantier, young man travelling to the northen mines to find a job (12 hours work in the dark, bad food, bad housing, bad weather, mean bosses).  Mining industry doesn't feel like a successful exemple of an industry, but more something you want to avoid to reproduce. 

Where does this urge for patrimonialization come from ? (it started in the 70's)

Françoise Choay (acclaimed historian of urban forms), wrote in 1996* that never before in the history public authorities had been concerned with keeping traces of the past. On the contrary, civilizations and kingdoms have always destroyed and rebuilt  through the ages, feeling confident in the superiority of what they had to propose. 


We don't.

This is a new thing about us since the 70's, witnessing all the damages we've done so fast and still not convinced we can stop ourselves from doing more, we protect what we can, we save it from ourselves, because we're scared otherwise we will continue to mess everything up.

In other words, this disproportionate interest in heritage feels like a symptom, among others, of a deeper  pathological condition : a profound lack of confidence in the present and the future, a  lack of projects and visions, which makes us turn into world heritage even the french northen mining site....

Check it out : 

Ville de Oignies - Pas-de-Calais, France

My first reaction was "wow, is that world heritage level ? Is the  situation that bad ?"

Its not about how it looks obviously. Somehow I think we miss those hard working times where workers were happy to be part of a team, because something important was there, solidarity, team work, action, going down in the mine shaft, manipulating machines. 

So this new entry in the UNESCO best shots is both worrying as it means that our civilisation is very insecure about its own capacities, otherwise we wouldn't care about praising this (bad) exemple, but at the same time this new patrimonial choice is good. It shows that the world institutions decided to value the capacity of industry to socialy organize cities. 


As the research worker Alain Bourdin wrote almost 20 years ago**..."we select in the past the symbols we need to build a speech on what we want to promote in the present". 

We obviously want to promote the good sides of industry (not environnemental damage and exploitation of workers).


I agree. Industry is the key. We can not just sell and insure things. We need to build something big, do something big, that takes place, and need machines.

AP

* ”De la démolition”, Françoise Choay, extrait de Métamorphoses parisiennes, ouvrage collectif, Liège, 1996.

** Article : "Sur quoi fonder les politiques du patrimoine urbain? - Professionnels et citoyens face aux témoins du passé", Alain Bourdin, Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, n°72, septembre 1996, p6-13.