The dialectics of the destructive construction in the consecration of World Heritage

Abstract

This article has as its main objective to discuss that which is called “the dialectics of the destructive construction”, that involves cities consecrated as world heritage or as Humanity’s cultural heritage, in Brazil. These dialectics occur in the process of consecration of the Humanity’s Cultural Heritage itself, as we have, on one hand, the UNESCO, through the World Heritage Convention, the World Heritage Committee and the World Heritage Index, as and international organ of protection that fights for the undisputed preservation of world-wide cultural and natural assets, and on the other hand, the contemporary tendency of mercantilizing, banalizing and destroying historical, memorial, cultural and natural spaces, ergo, two processes that establish themselves, dialectally, in the course of consecration of humanity’s cultural heritage. Our critic is owed to the merely esthetical and classist character of appropriation of the cultural assets, through the uncommitted tourism implemented in several living brazilian historical cities; in the progressive fetishism and scenarism displayed on the heritage’s space. The historical city, by being overtaken by the “cultural industry” through tourism, is depleted of it’s particularity in the strengthening of the feeling of belonging to a place and in the edification of citizenship. Before the frénésie by the World Heritage Index, rises the need of implementing a participative management of humanity’s cultural assets. Keywords: World Heritage. Historical City. Cultural Industry. Tourism. Destructive Construction Dialectics. Participative Management.