Unsettling the Past: Creating a Multi-Vocal Heritage of Exminster Hospital through Co-Production and Performance

Nicole Baur

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Chapter 2 Unsettling the Past: Creating a Multi-Vocal Heritage of Exminster Hospital through Co-Production and Performance

In: Narrating the Heritage of Psychiatry

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Nicole Baur

Nicole Baur
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 13–34

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519848_004

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Abstract

Until recently, decision-making about how heritage is understood, preserved, and therefore transmitted to future generations, has predominantly been the realm of experts and institutions. It was based on and represented through “authorised heritage discourse” (AHD) (Smith 2006) and focused around the built heritage. More recently, it has been acknowledged that heritage needs to be reconceptualised as a process and include immaterial heritage (Harvey 2001; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995), as “the tangible can only be understood and interpreted through the intangible” (Munjeri 2004), with intangible heritage as the underlying framework for tangible heritage to develop value. Rather than conflicting with AHD, the new movement therefore broadens the dominant heritage discourse, as the practices embedded in AHD can be interpreted as a process of heritage making, which not only regulates the meaning of the past, but also gives meaning to group identity, historical narratives and collective and individual memories (Smith 2012, paragraph 6).

This chapter illustrates how changes in theorisation and conceptualisation of heritage can be harnessed to co-construct a multi-vocal narrative of the former Exminster Hospital near Exeter, UK. Through engaging with surviving artefacts and by embodying oral histories in workshops, people affiliated with it created new narratives that can now be passed on to future generations. The project has shown that both the hospital’s material and immaterial heritage are omnipresent in the village of Exminster in buildings, street names, private archives, family genealogies as well as stories and memories. Whilst some of this heritage has been captured through AHD, complementing it with lay experiences unsettles the existing historical discourse and turns the hospital into a cultural product, offering new opportunities for interpretation and memorialisation.

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Narrating the Heritage of Psychiatry

Series: Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 1

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004519848

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 09 Oct 2024

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Chapter 2 Unsettling the Past: Creating a Multi-Vocal Heritage of Exminster Hospital through Co-Production and Performance

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Narrating the Heritage of Psychiatry

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