Barrack 57, into a symbol of the Holocaust' (authors' translation of Dutch language ... dia attention given to the lost barrack resulted in questions in the Dutch ...
WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY WORKING PAPERS IN EVOLUTIONARY GOVERNANCE THEORY
Homepage: www.governancetheory.com This is a revised personal version of the article published in International Journal of Heritage Studies. Please cite as: Felder, M., Duineveld, M., & Van Assche, K. (2014). Absence/presence and the ontological politics of heritage: the case of Barrack 57. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527258.2014.948483
Absence/presence and the ontological politics of heritage: The case of Barrack 57 Martijn Felder, Martijn Duineveld and Kristof Van Assche Abstract 19 July 2009. A barn burns down in a small Dutch town. Afterwards, this invisible and insignificant ‘barn’ became widely known as ‘Barrack 57’. The destruction triggered at-‐ tention and led to the barn’s association with a Nazi WWII transit camp and with Anne
Frank. Its material destruction made this barn/barrack both present and absent in vari-‐ ous discourses. We use the case of Barrack 57 to study the interplay between pres-‐ ence/absence and non-‐existence of objects in discourses, an exercise which connects to and contributes to the development of constructivist perspectives on object formation in heritage studies. Our analysis of presence/absence and non-‐existence combines Fou-‐ cauldian insights with concepts derived from actor network theory and Niklas Luh-‐ mann’s theory of social systems. Of particular importance is Luhmann’s distinction be-‐ tween first and second order observation. We argue that heritage objects themselves are the result of different enactments of (non)human properties in various pow-‐ er/knowledge configurations. With this view, a new task for critical heritage scholars emerges. Understanding the dynamics of presence/absence and non-‐existence of herit-‐ age objects in discourses deepens insight into the broader issues of the formation of heritage objects and their delineating technologies and the policies of normalisation and naturalisation. Keywords: object formation; absence/presence; heritage; Luhmann; actor network theory
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Introduction 19 July 2009. Early in the morning, a wooden barn vanishes in a blaze (ANP, July 19, 2009). The next evening a Dutch national news channel reported on this event: Just as barrack 57 was ready to be dismantled, moved and reassembled at Kamp Westerbork (a former WWII Nazi transit camp), it burned down. For more than fifty years it functioned as a barn in Veendam. (...) At one time, Anne Frank, like many others, was forced to disassemble batteries there. What remains is an enormous photograph of the building and many stunned visitors. (NOS 2009a, authors’ trans-‐ lation from Dutch language source) The fire soon drew the attention of local, national and even German, French, Israeli and American media (Nederlands Dagblad, August 1, 2009). In the two weeks following the fire, more than 100 articles were published in local and national newspapers (see ANP, July 19, 2009; Dagblad van het Noorden, July 21, 2009; Gelderlander, July 20, 2009; NRC.Next, July 20, 2009; Parool, July 20, 2009; Spits, July 21, 2009; Trouw, July 20, 2009). The news stories often highlighted the barn’s relation with the historical figure Anne Frank (see ANP, July 19, 2009; NRC.Next, July 20, 2009; Trouw, July 20, 2009). The barn was also placed into a broader contemporary context: it was referred to as a (lost) valu-‐ able object for reconstruction and an important object for enhancing visitor experiences at the Kamp Westerbork memorial site (see Gelderlander, July 20, 2009; Parool, July 20, 2009). Media attention soon shifted to salvageable barracks in the area, which could still be reassembled at the former Nazi site (see Dagblad van het Noorden, August 1, 2009; Spits, July 21, 2009). But the incident also raised some critical thoughts on the contemporary use and valuation of such objects (see Limburgs Dagblad, July 21, 2009; Parool, July 21, 2009). In a very short period of time, a modest ‘barn’, far removed from the public eye, be-‐ came ‘Barrack 57’ for an impressively large audience. What interests us is that its mate-‐ rial destruction made it present. It made the barn visible and relevant for different groups of people, and it acquired a presence in various discourses. Physical destruction created a new discursive object, with a new value ascribed to it. We believe this offers an effective starting point for a reflection on the construction of heritage objects and their values. In this article, we will use the case of Barrack 57 to study the interplay between the presence, absence and non-‐existence of heritage objects, and between the physical and discursive worlds (see also Bille, Hastrup, and Soerensen 2010; Meyer 2012). Such analysis can significantly contribute to the development of post-‐structuralist conceptual frameworks of object formation in heritage studies and to reflections on more inclusive or participatory heritage management (Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge 2007; Bunzl 2003; Graham, Ashworth, and Tunbridge 2000; Hanna et al. 2004; Harrison 2013; Low 2002; Muzaini 2014; Robertson 2012; Smith 2007; Waterton and Smith 2009, 2010). It also contributes empirically to the growing literature on Kamp Westerbork and to her-‐ itage and commemoration practices, in general (see, amongst others, Hijink 2011; Isaac
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and Çakmak 2013; van der Laarse 2010a, 2010b; Somers 2014; van Vree and van der Laarse 2009). In post-‐structuralist studies on heritage and participation, one can distinguish roughly three ways of thinking about heritage. First, heritage is conceived of as an ob-‐ ject, already assumed valuable, to which different meanings are ascribed. A quote from the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles illustrates this position: ‘Heritage is meaningful to those whom it is intended to benefit (i.e., future generations), it is neces-‐ sary to examine why and how heritage is valued, and by whom. Cultural significance is the term that the conservation community has used to encapsulate the multiple values ascribed to objects, buildings, or landscapes’ (Avrami, Mason, and Torre 2000, 7-‐8). Se-‐ cond, heritage itself is a normative concept ascribed to objects: ‘In this definition, all heritage is intangible, as it is redefined as a cultural process in which the values and cul-‐ tural and social meanings that help us make sense of the present are identified and ne-‐ gotiated’ (Waterton and Smith 2009, cf. Beunen, R., & Hagens, J. E. , 2009). Since differ-‐ ent groups of people or communities can make different constructions of the past, dif-‐ ferent values are ascribed to objects. A third, more radically post-‐structuralist version of the participatory heritage discourse considers heritage objects themselves to be the re-‐ sult of discursive construction (Duineveld and Van Assche 2011; Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013; Van Assche and Duineveld 2013). In this view, heritage values or sta-‐ tuses cannot be understood as new or different layers of meaning, but rather must be understood as new objects. We position ourselves in the third line of inquiry in which the object itself cannot be considered to be an a priori unity. Otherwise, we argue, one would perform a subtle form of exclusion by inclusion, by taking for granted a unity and a presence that instead has to be studied and found empirically. Before returning to the case of Barrack 57, we will first introduce key ideas in this more radical post-‐structuralist version of heritage theory – a theory of heritage in which objects are not fixed and clearly delineated but are the result of processes of object formation. These will serve as a foundation for our microanalysis of the interplay between the presence, absence and non-‐existence of her-‐ itage objects in our case study. After presenting our results as six narratives in which the barn plays different roles and is present, absent or non-‐existent, we will analyse our results and use them to refine and support the theoretical framework.
Object formation and heritage In line with a still growing body of academic work, we consider objects to be enacted differently at different sites and in different networks (Law 2004), practices (Mol 1999), systems (Luhmann 1995) or discourses (Foucault 1972). Objects, like subjects, truths, facts and knowledge, do not pre-‐exist observation; they are relational, contingent and arbitrary (Fuchs 2001), and they are constituted and delineated in power/knowledge networks (Foucault 1972, 44–45; Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013). An object is only real when it is enacted as real in actual practices and in constant interactions be-‐ tween humans and non-‐humans (Law 2004; Mol 1999; cf. Fuchs 2001). ‘Enactment and practice never stop, and realities depend upon their continued crafting – perhaps by people, but more often (…) in a combination of people, techniques, texts, architectural
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arrangements, and natural phenomena (which are themselves being enacted and re-‐ enacted)’ (Law 2004, 56). Within a discourse, objects can be observed as a unity, if they are constituted as such. A discourse is a unique set of discursive operations, which influence the formation of objects. Discourses are constituted in informal settings, such as conversations, but also in formal settings, such as bureaucratic organisations and universities. Within a discourse, an object forms along a path that delimits its formation. This path is a series of events and decisions within a system. With each step of this process the irreversibil-‐ ity of an object can be increased or decreased, that is, an object can be ‘unmade’ or forti-‐ fied (Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013; Van Assche and Duineveld 2013). De-‐ pending on the path taken, a dependency on the path can evolve, increasing the level of irreversibility: some options in the process of object formation become more likely than others because of the decisions made in an earlier stage of the process (Callon 1991). The techniques of object stabilization are, however, never perfect and are always likely to encounter strategies pushing for moulding or deconstruction of the object (Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013). Complementary to these theories inspired by the discourse theory of Michel Fou-‐ cault (1972, 1994, 1998) and actor network theory (Latour 2004; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Law 2004; Mol 2002), we have embedded notions from Niklas Luhmann’s sys-‐ tems theory (Fuchs 2001; Luhmann 1987, 2000, 2010; Seidl 2005) in this study. If we use systems theory to redefine discourse, we can say that discourses are operationally closed. This implies that every change within the environment of a discourse (changes of other discourses, material events) can be observed only according to the logic of the observing discourse itself (Luhmann 1989, 1995). Thus, objects do not pre-‐exist dis-‐ course, and the observation of objects is necessary for the formation of objects within a discourse. Furthermore, objects can only be formed in such a way that they agree with the pre-‐existing logic of a discourse. The historical and contextual contingency of objects becomes visible when one (e.g., a scientific discourse) starts to observe how other discourses observe (Fuchs 2001). Observing how observers observe is called second order observation (Fuchs 2001). Ac-‐ cording to Fuchs: ‘Levels of observation differ in the ways that they attribute observation. On the first level, observation proceeds naively, observes what it observes, and attrib-‐ utes its results to the world. It is unaware of construction. On the second level, observation attributes outcomes to the distinctions and constructions of a spe-‐ cific and empirical observer, who can only see that which can be seen from where he is at the moment’. (Fuchs 2001, 33) Second order observations learn that an object observed by a social system (or a psy-‐ chic system) does not imply the observation of that object by another system. These general insights in object formation align well with recent ideas on heritage advanced in geography, anthropology, cultural studies and philosophy. These insights, inspired by post-‐structuralism, illustrate how subjects and objects are entwined in pro-‐ cesses of co-‐evolution (Appadurai 1986; Farquhar and Zhang 2012), how subjectivities
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revolve and restructure themselves around new objects and projections at any given moment (Žižek 2006, 2012) and how the material world is an active participant in the construction of objects and subjects (DeLanda 2006; Massey 2005; Whatmore 2006). As such, objects do not exist before discursive articulations; instead, properties of the ma-‐ terial world entwine with discursive properties and energies to create objects, which can be invested with value and desire. Heritage can be used or abused. It is abused by oppressive states and rigid identities that reproduce themselves. In a more positive sense, it can be used as an affective and conceptual investment that enables us to find new understandings and attachments to the world, new ways to express and experience life.
Presence, absence and non-‐existence in heritage If we accept, as Luhmann (1989, 1995) suggests, that the observation of objects can on-‐ ly be understood as the result of the closed operations of the observing discourse that constitutes the object, we can further develop the notions of absence, presence and non-‐ existence and their interrelations. In this article we distinguish between pres-‐ ence/absence, as observed by discourse, and presence/absence and non-‐existence, as a result of second order observations between different discourses (see Van Assche and Costaglioli 2012). Within discourses, absence functions as the negation of presence in the past or fu-‐ ture: something is only absent when it was or could be observed to be present. The ob-‐ servation of ‘absolute’ absence by a discourse is impossible, since every observation of absence implies the observation of its previous or future presence (Van Assche and Costaglioli 2012). Objects can emerge in discourse, they can become taken for granted as present and they can disappear and become absent, with the awareness that they were once present. When objects were once present and are then forgotten by a dis-‐ course, their absence no longer exists within that discourse. They become (or have al-‐ ways been) non-‐existent. Presence, absence or non-‐existence in different networks can be observed by means of second order observations. Objects can be observed to be present/absent in one social system and non-‐existent in all other social systems. An object that is delineat-‐ ed and observed as real, as present, in discourse A could be unknown in discourses B and C. It could also be slightly or largely differently delineated in discourses B and C, but it can never be the same in different discourses. Identical observations across observers and the existence of identical objects within different systems are both theoretically im-‐ possible, since every system has its own unique dependencies and path of operations, which enact some objects as real (present or absent) and others not (Mol 1999; Fuchs 2001, see also Assche and Costaglioli 2012). Because a discourse often takes for granted what it observes, the awareness that an object could also be differently delineated, could be differently present or non-‐existent, is not part of the immediate observation. This can only be revealed by second order ob-‐ servation (Fuchs 2001; Duineveld, et al. 2009). ‘Bringing something back’, or remembering something, can therefore never be an operation that is the same for different discourses, and it can never bring back anything identical to the past object. An object that is brought back after long absence, which is
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remembered and/or valued as heritage, will necessarily be altered by the new material-‐ discursive context in which it arrives. It will be reshaped by the process of ‘remember-‐ ing’ itself, which is not a matter of retrieving, but of reshaping in a new mechanism of selection altered by the history of the discourse. Additionally, it will be altered because the subjectivities which remember, the groups and roles and the perspectives they rep-‐ resent, are not the same anymore (Assche et al. 2009; Beunen, R., & Duineveld, M. 2010). Just as the past can never be recreated, past objects cannot be maintained in a self-‐ identical state. Absence of an object from a discourse increases the difference between that object’s past and present forms; the difference between past and present context is larger than the gradually accruing difference one encounters in the self-‐reproduction of discourse and the gradual transformation of material-‐discursive assemblages (Van Assche, Beunen, and Duineveld 2014). Moving from non-‐existence to presence will like-‐ ly increase the difference between context of origin (if the object already existed some-‐ where else) and the receiving context even more. In such a move between discourses, what is new in the receiving context will be thoroughly transformed by that context in unpredictable patterns, since the originating discourse and the full properties and func-‐ tions of its objects cannot be fully grasped by an observing discourse (Van Assche, Beunen, and Duineveld 2014; Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013). Second order observation is needed to discern any pattern in the linkage between context of origin and the context in which the object appears as new.
Fire/wood/barn/barrack In the following six narratives we attempt to reconstruct how the event of a fire pro-‐ voked different effects in different discourses at different times. Our reconstruction is based on 3 site visits and observations (in 2011 and 2013) at the Kamp Westerbork memorial site, 11 indepth interviews, 119 newspaper articles and 8 video/audio news samples as well as several policy documents, letters and speeches. We focus on how dif-‐ ferent groups of people have observed Kamp Westerbork and Barrack 57 and how these observations evolved after the event that took place on 19 July 2009. When texts have been produced by public figures or are used in public sources, full names are reported. However, when they refer to the memories of survivors of WWII we use only their ini-‐ tials to guarantee their anonymity. We present this reconstruction as a series of narra-‐ tives, which result from second order observations of newspaper articles, books and interviews. The presen t-‐day presence of Barrack 57 in each discourse, we will argue, is partly due to the fire that destroyed large parts of a wooden barn; yet the ways in which it is present are moulded by the different pathways that constitute each discourse. First narrative: a barn, two tractors and a shovel In the spring of 2009, Mr Egges, a farmer, showed a television crew around on his farm. The reason for their visit was his barn, which he said was no longer functional: ‘The front is rotten, the sides are rotten, the windows are broken, and through the middle is a gutter that leaks’ (Rtv Noord 2009, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). Mr Egges had wanted to build a new barn for a long time but had been unable to get a
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building permit from the municipality because the new barn would be 350 m2 bigger than the old barn (Volkskrant 10 July 2008). There was, however, something special about this old, worn barn. It was recognised by historians, curators and the public as a former barrack of Kamp Westerbork, a WWII transit camp, from which 107,000 Jewish people and 245 Sinti were deported to Nazi concentration camps in the east (Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork 2011). It had been recognised as such since 1985. Back then, Mr Egges’ father had laconi-‐ cally responded, ‘I do not understand the buzz around this barn’ (cited by van der Laarse 2010a, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). In contrast to his fa-‐ ther, Mr Egges was well aware of the historical significance of the barn (van der Laarse, 2010a; Rtv Drenthe 2009a; Rtv Noord 2009), which was often visited by school children and was even used in the movie The Discovery of Heaven (Rtv Noord 2009; Trouw 20 July 2009), a movie directed by Jeroen Krabbé and based on a novel by Harry Mulisch in which references to Kamp Westerbork as a transit camp are made. Due to an expressed interest in the barn by Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork (from now on, Memorial Centre), the municipality reopened its evaluation of Mr Egges’ building permit in 2008. Mr Egges was willing to give the old barn to the Memorial Cen-‐ tre if he was allowed to build a new barn (Volkskrant 10 July 2008). However, in the early morning of 19 July 2009, the old barn burned down, along with everything in it. The next day, Mr Egges explained that the fire destroyed all his agricultural tools, in-‐ cluding his two tractors and a shovel. In front of a regional television crew he stated, ‘It is very painful because all my tools and machines are gone. I had tools from my grandfa-‐ ther, just simple things, but it means a piece of my personal history is gone’ (Rtv Dren-‐ the 2009a, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). For Mr Egges, the barn stored items of economic and personal value. He added that the loss of the barn itself was also grave because it could – despite its state – still have had so much value for oth-‐ er people, once it was reconstructed at the Memorial Centre (idem). Second narrative: reconstruction of a buried past After WWII, the Westerbork camp was used first to house collaborators and, later, sol-‐ diers departing for the Indies. Between 1951 and 1971 the camp, renamed as Woonoord Schattenberg, and some of the barracks were used to house people from the Moluccas (Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork 2011; Obdeijn and Schrover 2008). Dur-‐ ing the 1950s, many of the unused barracks where sold (without proper administra-‐ tion) as building materials. Some ended up as barns (such as Mr Egges’) or community houses, others were used to house migrant workers, as was done in southern Limburg (Reformatorisch Dagblad 8 Augustus 2009). Woonoord Schattenberg was abandoned in 1971 and any remaining barracks on the site were razed and used to fill ditches in order to level out the ground (G. Abuys, personal communication, June 2011). The open ter-‐ rain that remained was scattered with radar disks and used as a centre for astronomical observation (Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork 2011). In 1979 a memorial centre was constructed near the site and in the 1990s, the Me-‐ morial Centre decided to reconstruct the former Kamp Westerbork site itself by creat-‐ ing symbolic traces that referred to what had happened there during WWII. Following
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old building plans, they erected mounts that outlined the position and size of the former barracks (Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork 2011). However, more recently, it became clear to the Memorial Centre that these symbolic references no longer adequately inform visitors about what had happened there. The director of the Memorial Centre, Mr Mulder, explained his thinking: Fifteen years ago I would have said that (reconstruction) would be shoddy, that we shouldn’t do that. This place has changed so dramatically. There is nothing left here. All around us were plains and drifting sands back then. Now the former camp is en-‐ tirely surrounded by forests. (...) We used to think that placing one object back in these changed surroundings would be incongruous. (...) This has changed because we noticed, by the responses of visitors, that (...) it was very hard for them to imag-‐ ine what it was once like. (NOS 2009b, authors’ translation from Dutch language source) In 2009, Barrack 57 was considered one of the last remaining, relatively intact bar-‐ racks, which could be reconstructed at the former camp site to help visitors imagine what the Nazi transit camp was like. The director’s response to the fire was consequent-‐ ly as follows. It is very sad that this happened because we were far along in the planning of what we would do with it [the barrack]. We had already placed a life-‐sized, three-‐ dimensional photo on the site where it was to be reconstructed. (...) We do not know about many of these barracks, and if you then lose one of them, one that we were certain could play a major role in the transference of the significance of this place to visitors, it is a great loss. It, however, also means that this should not hap-‐ pen again. (...) If we find a similar object in the future, then we should be generally prepared to say, set aside all the rules; they do not matter right now; we have to protect it. (NOS 2009b, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). Third narrative: Anne Frank’s barrack Within one month after the fire, over 100 articles were published in local and national newspapers (see ANP 19 July 2009; NRC.Next 20 July 2009; Trouw 20 July 2009). In many of these articles, reporters mentioned that the barn used to carry the number 57, that batteries had been disassembled in it, that Anne Frank had disassembled batteries in it (see ANP 19 July 2009 for an example that mentions all three). Soon after the fire, a frequent headline in the newspapers stated, ‘Fire destroys the industrial barrack of Anne Frank’ (e.g., Troop 20 July 2009, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). Thus, Mr Egges’ barn had become Anne Frank’s barrack. In the words of historian van der Laarse (2010a, 306), ‘the fire immediately became of iconic importance after the newspaper headline wrote about Anne Frank’s barrack, a name that the Memorial Cen-‐ tre itself never used. (...) The Anne Frank effect changed the barrack from Veendam, or Barrack 57, into a symbol of the Holocaust’ (authors’ translation of Dutch language source). After the media had widely covered the loss of ‘Anne Frank’s barrack’, they started to report on the value of any still existing barracks (see Gelderlander 20 July
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2009; Parool 20 July 2009); there had to be other barracks left. In the first days after the fire, the Memorial Centre and the media received a lot of information about existing former Kamp Westerbork barracks. The most interesting of these became the centre of new media attention (see Dagblad van het Noorden 21 July 2009; Spits 21 July 2009). ‘Anne Frank’s barrack’ changed back to ‘Westerbork barracks’, in general, and these ap-‐ peared to be everywhere (see Trouw 25 July 2009). Fourth narrative: Dutch heritage of historical and monumental value The Memorial Centre’s emphasis on protecting the remaining barracks and all the me-‐ dia attention given to the lost barrack resulted in questions in the Dutch Parliament di-‐ rected to Mr Plasterk, the minister of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, which is responsible for monumental legislation and protection of historical objects in the Netherlands. He was asked if Barrack 57 had been given monumental status that required protection. Mr Plasterk responded in writing, ‘the barrack destroyed by fire was not protected by the monumental regulations developed in 1988. This barrack had not been recognised as a national or municipal monument in previous inventories ei-‐ ther (Plasterk 2009, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). The role of the municipality in granting Mr Egges a building permit was also scruti-‐ nized. However, according to Minister Plaster, ‘the municipality followed its regulations accordingly and responded to the proposal within the lawful space of time’ (Plasterk 2009, authors’ translation from Dutch language source). He added that the building li-‐ cense was at first denied because the owner wanted to construct a new barn that ex-‐ ceeded the municipality’s guidelines for development. Only after consultation between the municipality and the owner did it become clear that the barn would go to the Memo-‐ rial Centre, to which the municipality agreed (idem). As Minister Plasterk concludes, ‘My impression is that the municipality agreed with Mr Egges’ request, taking into account the cultural and historical context of the barrack’ (idem). Fifth Narrative: something on the telly Four days after the fire, in the village of Gees, a group of people gathered in Mr Oldejans’ backyard. Along with a television crew, there were experts from the Memorial Centre, members of the local historical society and of course Mr Oldejans himself (Rtv Drenthe 2009b). They were looking at a garage. Mr Oldejans explained about the garage’s histo-‐ ry: before it ended up in his backyard, it had been taken from the Kamp Westerbork site and reconstructed in Gees to function as a Reformed association building and school (see Algemeen Dagblad 23 July 2009; Volkskrant 24 July 2009). When the association built a new building, Mr Oldejans’ father thought parts of the old building would be use-‐ ful for the construction of a garage in his garden (Rtv Drenthe 2009b). Now, many years later, that garage was in a bad shape and Mr Oldejans was planning to tear it down (Algemeen Dagblad 23 July 2009). Directly after hearing that a fire had almost entirely destroyed a former Westerbork barrack, Mr Hilbrands, one of Mr Oldejans’ neighbours and a member of the local histor-‐ ical society, contacted the Memorial Centre and told them about Mr Oldejans’ garage and its history. As Mr Hilbrands explained, ‘I was afraid that the Memorial Centre would
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be disappointed. After all, there are just a few rotted, wooden window frames. Yet to my surprise, they were very enthusiastic’ (NOS 2009c). News about the destruction of the barrack spread rapidly. People, like Mr Hilbrands and Mr Oldejans, started comparing their own barns, chicken sheds and even latrines to the lost barrack (interviews; see also Nederlands Dagblad 1 August 2009; Reformato-‐ risch Dagblad 8 August 2009). In the first months after the fire, ‘hundreds’ of notices were received by the Memorial Centre. Some of these objects appeared to be very well preserved and therefore well-‐suited for reconstruction (Rtv Drenthe 2009b). In March 2010, about eight months after the fire in Veendam, Mr Mulder revealed a draft plan to reconstruct at least eight barracks at Kamp Westerbork (Rtv Drenthe 2010). If Mr Eg-‐ gers’ barn had been a unique opportunity to reconstruct a barrack, its destruction had apparently presented many more of them. Sixth narrative: it looks big, but in fact, it was very small Because of this revaluation of former Kamp Westerbork barracks, we (the authors) be-‐ came interested in how survivors of the Holocaust, and specifically those who had stayed in Kamp Westerbork, felt about the fire and the loss of the by now well-‐known Barrack 57. While walking with Mr S.L. on the former Kamp Westerbork site, he ex-‐ plains to us that he thinks it is a pity that Barrack 57 was lost because the mounds that now refer to the barracks on the memorial site might give visitors an incorrect impres-‐ sion. Pointing at one of the mounds he states: ‘it looks big, but in fact, it was very small’ (personal communication, July 2011). Yet when we asked another survivor, Mr F.S., about the barrack, his first response was, ‘a barrack is nothing, and a barrack will never be anything’ (personal communication, July 2011). Another survivor, Mrs C.J.J., re-‐ sponded similarly by explaining that these barracks were just there at the time, just like many other objects (personal communication, July 2011). Their thinking, shared by sev-‐ eral other survivors, was that reconstructing a barrack at the former Kamp Westerbork site was not of historical or contemporary importance. It would be like rewriting histo-‐ ry, and it would be impossible to recreate the actual conditions in which people were living at that time (Mrs C. J.J., Mr J.S., and Mr F.S., personal communications, July 2011). However, Mr F.S. did emphasise that he thought there was value in protecting these structures at the sites where they were last encountered (personal conversation with Mr F.S., 2011).
Absence and presence revisited To reinterpret the six narratives presented, we first analyse presence, absence and non-‐ existence within the different narratives. Then, we focus on the interplay of presence and absence as it plays out between different discourses, observing each discourse’s reactions to the event. Finally, we touch upon the discursive origin of boundaries as they are empirically observed and become part of the formation of heritage objects. Presence and absence within discourses (internal dialectics) From a second order perspective, we can observe that the presence, absence and non-‐ existence of the barn/barrack played out in multiple ways. Both material and immateri-‐ al properties were enacted and ordered differently. In the first narrative, Mr Egges’ barn
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was present as a decrepit building that barely functioned as a storage place for a few possessions. After the fire, Mr Egges emphasised the loss of his tools, some of which had belonged to his father. What became absent after the fire, for Mr Egges, were the tools that were stored in his barn. In the second narrative, that of the Memorial Centre, Mr Egges’ barn had been present as a former ‘Kamp Westerbork barrack’ since 1985. The existing barrack had been recently revalued as a potentially interesting object to recon-‐ struct at the Kamp Westerbork memorial site. What became absent for the Memorial Centre after the fire was the possibility to reconstruct this barrack at the memorial site. Because of the fire, Mr Egges’ barn became an important object for the media to re-‐ port on in the third narrative. The fire triggered a (re)discovery of the object in new, larger circles. It had been discussed in the media sporadically since its rediscovery in 1985 and had received media attention again in the spring of 2009, as plans for recon-‐ struction became more feasible; but only after 19 July 2009 did the former barn/barrack become an important object in a continuous stream of (inter)national media coverage. In this post-‐fire coverage, many immaterial properties of the barn/barrack were ordered into the narrative. It became ‘Barrack 57’, a former indus-‐ trial barrack, and ‘Anne Frank’s barrack’, thereby turning it into a (lost) symbol of the Holocaust. The fourth narrative described how the fire triggered a series of events in political and administrative discourses. The loss of the barrack presented a legislative problem that revolved around the questions of whether the municipality had handled Mr Egges’ request for a new building permit correctly, and whether Barrack 57, as well as all re-‐ maining barracks, should have been recognised as a monument and, as such, protected better. Before the fire, monument status for such barracks did not exist (i.e., non-‐ existence), after the fire, monumental status became absent. The media introduced both the lost material barrack and its immaterial and iconic status to a large group of observers in the fifth narrative. These observers started to connect the communicated immaterial properties to other structures that looked like Mr Egges’ former barn. This turned many garages, chicken sheds and storage rooms into potential WWII heritage objects. From the sixth narrative, we learn that some Holocaust survivors who had lived and worked in Kamp Westerbork’s barracks during WWII were aware of the loss of this par-‐ ticular barrack. Yet some of them did not share the need of the media and the Memorial Centre to give such attention, symbolic status and historical value to it. The barrack had been present and, after the fire, continued to be present – but as a bad memory, not as something deserving reconstruction. As these narratives show, presence and absence play out in a multitude of ways. Following Luhmann’s theory, we therefore acknowledge that absence/presence and non-‐existence take different shapes in different discourses. The interweaving of dis-‐ courses affects the forms and functions of absence and presence, and only second order observation can discern the resulting pattern. Furthermore, material and symbolic changes only make a difference within a discourse according to the logics of the dis-‐ course itself. According to Peirce, a sign, or a distinction, is a difference that makes a dif-‐ ference (Peirce 1958). In order for something to acquire meaning, a difference in space, time or qualities has to be observable and observed, and has to link to other distinctions
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or signs. A blade of grass catching fire next to a barn would normally not irritate (in Luhmannian language) any discourse or cause any change in material-‐discursive as-‐ semblages. When the difference, in this case the physical disappearance of the barn, be-‐ comes relevant, it does so in the context of a discourse or assemblage (depending on the version of post-‐structuralism one embraces). The sudden material absence of a barrack can be a legislative problem, a lost potential or an unimportant event, depending on the discourse in which it is observed. Presence and absence and the mutual irritation of discourses In this study we have also observed shifts in a discourse’s constructions of the ‘barrack’ – and its presence/absence – through the discourse’s observations of other discourses’ structuring and valuation of events construction of the object (its delineation and (im)material properties). The interweaving of discourses, the associated processes of discursive and narrative migration, causes not only the arrival of new objects but also the transformation of previously delineated objects. Whatever arrives in a discourse, changes the discourse’s discursive context (cf. Eco 1976). A striking example is the Me-‐ morial Centre’s change in perspective regarding the reconstruction of barracks based on their observation that visitors could not understand the significance of the place through merely symbolic representations made of mounds and monuments. Other examples are the ways in which the material destruction caused by the fire and the extensive media coverage of that destruction introduced some of the lost bar-‐ rack’s immaterial properties throughout a large network, irritating many discourses. Communicated (im)material properties were, in different discourses, connected to al-‐ ready known (im)material properties: changing chicken sheds and garages into new material presences; raising parliamentary questions on the legal status (monument or not) of this and similar objects; changing municipalities’ perspectives on approving building permits. We argue here that it is exactly through such irritations between discourses, be-‐ tween (external) observations and (internal) logics, that different object formations of the barn/barrack evolved. An old barn became an enabler for revised building permits; ‘incongruous elements’ became valuable objects for reconstruction; a non-‐existing monument (not on the monuments list) became a potential monument; something lost became an important object to report about; something in the backyard had the poten-‐ tial to become a highly valued historical object. Differently delineated objects in formation Yet the impossibility of each of these discourses to fully observe and incorporate en-‐ actments of the barn/barrack in their own discourses results in different unique deline-‐ ations of a seemingly unified object (cf. Law 2004, 7). Again we emphasize that objects, and any other element that constitutes a discourse and is constituted by it, do not travel between discourses. Discursive migration occurs, but it cannot be understood as an ac-‐ tual migration of a self-‐identical object, not even as an object that is transformed during travel. Rather, we have to think in terms of discourses as observing systems that recog-‐ nise objects according to their own sets of distinctions and their own manner of linking concepts, objects and subjects. One can also speak of unique material-‐discursive assem-‐
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blages which produce meaning, with some materialities playing a role in various as-‐ semblages but producing different insights and affects there (in Deleuzian language). For the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences, the barrack had not been rec-‐ ognised as a monument, and they ‘refused’ to observe other identified former WWII barracks as monuments (i.e., give them monumental status). The owners of old barns and garages still wanted to remove these structures from their lands, even after they started to observe them as barracks from Kamp Westerbork and/or came to under-‐ stand the value these objects might have for others. The barrack that, through its loss, gained an iconic status in the Memorial Centre, in the media and in wider systems, was still considered nothing by some survivors of Kamp Westerbork. Thus, any observed shifts in material and immaterial presence and absence – including when these take place in and are observed by other systems – are ordered on the intersection between power and knowledge according to the internal logics of the observing system (Luh-‐ mann 1989, 1993, 1995). Discourses are thus self-‐referential and operationally closed (Fuchs 2001; Luhmann 1995), constituting absence/presence according to their own pre-‐existing logic. Yet at the same time, they are structurally open. This implies that changes in the environment of a discourse can irritate or resonate within that discourse. Since different discourses are each other’s environment, changes within one discourse can be observed by another discourse, and these observations can irritate and resonate in and according to the in-‐ ternal logics of the observing discourse. Reconstruction, legislation, demolition, Anne Frank, bad memories – these are all communicated, observed and structured according to different systems and into different logics, eventually resulting in different objects.
Conclusion: the ontological politics of absence and presence The presence, absence and non-‐existence of various material and immaterial properties observed after the fire of 19 July 2009 played out in a multitude of ways, each of which depended on the internal logics of the discourses that observed this event. The pattern-‐ ing of absence/presence and the coming into existence of non-‐existent objects was also influenced by the discursive configuration that attached itself to the event of the fire. The event was constituted as, amongst others, a legislative problem, a lost potential or an unimportant event. We also saw that different discourses observed other discourses observing, enacting and delineating the discursive objects. In some discourses the ob-‐ ject was new, in others it was rediscovered; in some there was a material object that acquired new meanings, in others there was no material object discerned. The media attention entangled discourses in a new manner and sparked internal changes and new effects in neighbouring discourses. The event created opportunities to remember, to create and to influence other discourses. Due to the event and the attention it garnered, transformations took place: non-‐existence into absence, absence into presence and pre-‐ sent objects into other present objects. The Memorial Centre, having noticed that visitors needed physical features of the commemorated past at the Kamp Westerbork site, changed their perspective towards reconstruction and, thus, the value of still-‐remaining barracks. Owners of objects deemed similar to the Veendam barrack observed the value that had been added to the-‐ se ‘still-‐remaining barracks’ and contacted the Memorial Centre. It is in this tension be-‐
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tween (external) observations and (internal) logics that modes of object formation con-‐ tinue to evolve. In the wake of the fire that destroyed Barrack 57 and with the discovery of many more barracks, the ‘reconstruction issue’ of the memorial site itself (in contrast to the earlier opposition towards reconstruction) almost entirely disappeared from dif-‐ ferent discourses. Studying the presence, absence and non-‐existence of Barrack 57 within and be-‐ tween different discourses allows us to observe the entangled complexities by which heritage policies, practices and realities are discursively formed. It leads to the assertion that, for heritage policies and practices to become fully politicised and more democratic and inclusive, we should get rid of the last bits of essentialism in the theories, conceptu-‐ alisations and practices of inclusive heritage. Heritage objects are not given and clearly delineated presences waiting to gain meaning/value as heritage. They are the result of processes of object-‐formation enactment in various discourses and in various pow-‐ er/knowledge configurations. The analysis of presence/absence reinforces both the epistemological and political claims of post-‐structuralist heritage theories. Thus new tasks for critical heritage scholars emerge in which the enactment and formation of heritage objects and their normalizing policies and delineating technolo-‐ gies, as well as the mechanisms that create their irreversibility, become the objects of scrutiny (cf. Duineveld, Van Assche, and Beunen 2013). The concept of ontological poli-‐ tics could serve here as a valid point of departure for future mining and revisiting of ge-‐ nealogies of object formation in heritage studies. Ontological politics implies that we acknowledge that ‘the real’ is implicated in ‘the political’ and vice versa. ‘If the term “on-‐ tology” is combined with that of “politics” then this suggests that the conditions of pos-‐ sibility are not given. That reality does not precede the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather shaped within these practices’ (Mol 1999). Objects cannot escape the political; only by unveiling the pathways, sites and technologies in which they are enacted can we fully grasp the politics embedded in heritage. P.S. In the spring of 2013 we were part of a guided excursion in Westerbork and, due to our work on a concept version of this paper, we were especially interested in Barrack 57. To our surprise the official guide of the Memorial Centre told us that the barn was no long-‐ er what it was thought to be. Recently, questions had emerged within the Memorial Cen-‐ tre about whether the burned down barn had indeed been Barrack 57. Maps and build-‐ ing blueprints were analysed and some of them contradicted the earlier claims. The barn was not Barrack 57. It had no industrial function and actually had a different name and location in the camp. Anne Frank had not disassembled batteries in it.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the staff of Memorial Centre Camp Westerbork for sharing in-‐ formation with us. We also thank everybody who was willing to talk to us about Barrack 57 and Kamp Westerbork. A special word of appreciation goes out to the survivors of WWII who passed through Kamp Westerbork and were willing to share some of their most difficult memories with us.
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Dagblad van het Noorden, 1 August 2009. Barak 57 is meer dan de Anne Frank barak. Gelderlander, 20 July 2009. Authentiek erfgoed is wezenlijke toevoeging. Limburgs Dagblad, 21 July 2009. Oppassen voor verkitsching historie. Memorial Centre Kamp Westerbork. 2011. Geschiedenis van Kamp Westerbork. Acces-‐ sed on 25 April 2014 via http://www.kampwesterbork.nl. Nederlands Dagblad, 1 August 2009. Krantenkoppen Afgebrande barak uit Veendam is meer dan de Anne Frankbarak. NOS, 2009a. Barak Westerbork afgebrand. Accessed on 14 March 2011 via http://nos.nl/audio/38818-‐barak-‐westerbork-‐afgebrand.html. NOS, 2009b. Oude barakken Westerbork afgebrand. Accessed on 3 November 2011 via http://nos.nl/video/38777-‐oude-‐barakken-‐westerbork-‐afgebrand.html. NOS, 2009c. Zoektocht naar barakken Westerbork. Accessed on 3 November 2011 via http://nos.nl/video/39165-‐zoektocht-‐naar-‐barakken-‐westerbork.html. NRC.NEXT, 20 July 2009. Barak van Anne Frank brandt af. Parool, 20 July 2009. Net voor teruggave aan Herinneringscentrum Westerbork: Het was een groot en belangwekkend. Parool, 21 July 2009. Joden, NSB'ers en nu varkens; 'Moet je dan ook die ene wagon heb-‐ ben waarin ze is weggevoerd? Plasterk, R. H. A. 25-‐09-‐2009. Response to questions raised in the 2nd chamber (text): Reference number: 2009Z15765. Reformatorisch Dagblad, 8 Augustus 2009. Kampverleden krijgt gezicht terug. Rtv Drenthe, 2009a. Gees heeft barak voor Herinneringscentrum. Accessed on 4 Novem-‐ ber 2011 via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzJQNkWeyBs. Rtv Drenthe, 2009b. Barak Gees uit Kamp Westerbork. Accessed on 4 November 2011 via http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfTV3w6WvA0. Rtv Drenthe, 2010. Plan voor aanpassing terrein Kamp Westerbork. Accessed on 4 No-‐ vember 2011 via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNC9YSI_qk8. Rtv Noord, 2009. Historische barak terug naar Herinneringscentrum Westerbork. Ac-‐ cessed on 4 November 2011 via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44XSlYx6MD8. Spits, 21 July 2009. Alle barakken terug naar Westerbork. Trouw, 20 July 2009 Brand verwoest werkbarak van Anne Frank. Trouw, 25 July 2009. Na de brand duiken ze plots op; Barakken Westerbork zwierven uit om te dienen als huis of schuur. Volkskrant, 10 July 2008. De lange reis van een barak uit Westerbork. Volkskrant, 24 July 2009. Jacht op de laatste Westerborkbarakken.
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