{ heritagise }

 

Have you ever asked yourself what your heritage is? Or what is your legacy? If you are lucky enough, you will find these questions easy going and straightforward to answer; you might even see their answers clearly in your surroundings. It might be a spectacular building, a cuisine or a tradition. However, what if you are not part of the norm or the hegemonic culture? Then, a pragmatic paradigm for answering these questions might be less helpful. What if, in an obscure way, you find the mainstream definition of your heritage is specific and heritage at large very far from your own perception of it, yet whenever you try to define it within the definition or norm you end up feeling not the subject of your own sentences? You feel a stranger in your writings! That is, when all definitions and words around you fail to recognise your heritage, you feel the urge to make your own, you heritagise [1], and find home in your own suitcase.

[1] A notion that aims to adopt a linguistically dynamic verb to describe heritage as a process rather than a static noun. Accordingly, heritagisation entails the ongoing operation of verbalising heritage and represent it as a heritage making tool rather than an imposed system.

 

Husam Abusalem