Blog post
The Paradox of Intangible Heritage
Allegiance and collective spirit in football
As the interest in intangible heritage is increasing, galleries, libraries, museums and other collection holders are currently investigating which (and how) tangible artefacts can represent traditions, practices, skills and cultural phenomena.
Looking at photographic collections in particular, it's a striking realisation that physical prints or negatives are tangible representations of immaterial narratives, while the depictions, the images themselves, are recordings of moments that carry an essence of tangibility. Ironically, the digital transfer of an image re-renders the tangible carrier into an intangible asset that takes on new life and meaning in the even less material 'cloud'.
Talking about and working with intangible cultural heritage is a challenging and complex process, as the partners in dedicated efforts - such as the WEAVE project - can testify first-hand.
Always there, forever lost?
Editing through their extensive press photo collections, the team at TopFoto - an image agency based in Edenbridge, England - was triggered by the complexity of the topic to explore an analogy with a famous philosophical problem: the 'Ship of Theseus'-paradox.
In ancient Greek mythology, Theseus was the founder-king of Athens, mostly famous for slaying the minotaur and loving - then betraying - Ariadne, daughter of King Minos. In being a 'mythical king', Theseus instantly provokes a level of intangible heritage; but there is much more to it.
The 'Ship of Theseus'-paradox was first narrated by Plutarch, a historian and early biographer of Theseus. In the hero’s life story, Plutarch’s paragraph about the ship runs as follows:
The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side contending that the ship remained the same, the other that it did not.
In other words: if the ship of Theseus was kept in a harbour and every part of it got replaced piece by piece, would it then be a new ship or still the same? If it is a new ship, at what point did it stop being the ship of Theseus? And - as philosopher Thomas Hobbes later asked - if all the removed pieces would be reassembled to form a new ship, would that ship be the ship of Theseus too?
Eternal allegiance
Now how does this relate to intangible heritage?
A good example to illustrate this is the domain of sport. Traditionally, people identify with their local team (I live here, my team is…), often their national equipe as well. Territorial borders - it should be said - are great examples of intangible heritage too, as the majority of the world does not have a painted line on the ground or anything as tangible as a checkpoint or a wall.
Anyway: as intangible as they might be, borders could very well be decisive for your allegiance to wearing red or blue on a Saturday afternoon. Of course, the world is more complicated than that, and particularly in contemporary society the global 'us and them' has blurred. Nonetheless, your club loyalty might very well be 'inherited' from the place, the community or the family you stem from.
But what happens when you move house, far away from your revered grounds - will your fanship change or remain the same? Or, vice versa: what happens if your team, its trainer, their very position in the community changes? Will team spirit be the same or take on a new identity?
From Plumstead to Ashburton Grove
For example, we can take a look at the history of one famous English football club, Arsenal.
Founded in 1886, it was formed by Royal Arsenal munitions workers in Woolwich, south of the river Thames. Their original ground, located in nearby Plumstead, was destroyed by suffragettes in 1913. The club then moved north of the river to the famous Arsenal Stadium in Highbury, where it played its home games for almost 100 years.
Denied permission to expand the ground, it relocated to a purpose built stadium on a former waste site, in Ashburton Grove in 2006.
A familiar tale for many a hallowed turf of clubs all around the world. Considering that each individual blade of grass lives around 40 to 50 days, even the ones that stand still have little claim on permanency. Unless we embrace the intangible heritage adagium that states that the 're-skinned' ship of Theseus is indeed the same as Theseus' ship, and therefore the club Arsenal is the club Arsenal, whether it be housed in Highbury or Ashburton Grove.
The memories, the passion, the joy, the togetherness, the celebration of goals, the frustration of losing are all embodied in a collective spirit which is constantly changing and forever remaining the same. Wherever the paradox of Theseus' ship applies, intangible heritage shines through.
This blog is part of WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana, a project aimed at developing a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities.