Libyan Update from the Virtual Annual Meeting: Authentic Orchestrations & Orchestrated Authenticity

Authentic Orchestrations & Orchestrated Authenticity

Reem Furjani (SCENE)

Arguing against exclusive value-production in conventional conservation practices, an emerging discourse in the heritage field encourages re-thinking value as a socio-cultural construct that occurs within what communities do with and around heritage. However, while the new Critical Heritage field positions communities as carriers of the authentic native interpretations, this paper questions this authenticity by foregrounding the role of the spatial setting in influencing lay processes of meaning-making. As a case study, the study focuses on a spatial transformation around the Roman Arch of Marcus Aurelius in the Medina of Tripoli during a politically-driven restoration of it. By taking three sections in the timeline of the colonial symbol, differences are revealed in lay interpretations before and after this transformation. The first illuminates community ways of engaging with the arch following the Roman period. Voyageur diaries between the 17th and 20th centuries record a native de-valuing of the aesthetic and monumental qualities of it as manifested in its utilisation to serve functional purposes; nonetheless, lay efforts to sustain it indicate a valuing of its historical symbolism. Secondly, its restoration during the Italian colonisation of Libya included contextual appropriations to emphasise its grandeur which authoritatively re-constructed its monumental meaning in a way that abates native socio-cultural filters. This is revealed in the third section which ethnographically documents current civil society uses of the arch as an aesthetic monument. In this way, the paper illuminates processes of decay and re-creation of meanings and their influence on authenticity in community ways of doing heritage.