Canonisation and Popularisation

Responsible: Prof. Dr. Eckhard Schumacher

The work package is conceived as overarching project of the entire subproject Shared Heritage. It seeks to promote a frame for interdisciplinary research on the concept of shared heritage in the Baltic Sea region and provides a comparative analysis of national, transnational, and regional processes of canon formation as well as fundamental reflections on the relation between de- and re-canonization.

In order to approach changes of cultural canons in the Baltic Sea region, we aim to examine processes of canon formation itself: What is included and what is not in the canon? Who determines canonization processes and thus disposes interpretative authorities? Which media foster, promote, or bypass those precesses?  In a further step, we draw on the analyzes of the relationship between cultural heritage and canon as forms of cultural policy and knowledge production: Does the demand for identity, experience, and authenticity—in opposition to the canon orientated at conservation, archiving, and repetition—merely correspond to a logic of marketing, or do we have to identify other processes of re-shaping knowledge production in this context? Does the process of decline of a canon correspond to the approach of “curated decays”, formulated by DeSilvey in order to separate the concept of heritage from the orientation toward preservation and safeguarding? Do processes of decanonization correlate with the logic, or culture of obsolescence particularly in the age of digitalization?