Heritage in Movement: Rethinking Cultural Borrowings in the Mediterranean

Abstract

This article investigates heritage in terms of different intertwined temporalities and polyphonic pasts in the Mediterranean. It posits that postcolonial theory has fallen short of perceiving the effects that movements of exchange, circularity and choice have had on Mediterranean societies in colonial times. Further, it explicates that the exploration of these avenues in matters of heritage and material culture would open the path for alternative understandings of the articulations of cultural encounters. Using a biographical approach I concentrate on an historical hotel, the Gezira Palace Hotel in Cairo, and explore the ways in which processes of change occur in intermediary spaces of cultural encounters, exchange and circularity that generate novel cultural expressions.

Keywords:

• Heritage
• Material Culture
• Movement
• Cultural Encounters
• Mediterranean
• Postcolonialism

Notes

[1] Tilley, ‘Objectification’, 71.

[2] Hartog, Régimes d’historicité, 198.

[3] Chambers, ‘The Mediterranean’, 430.

[4] Augé, L’Impossible Voyage.

[5] Farag, The Palace; Henderson, ‘Conserving Colonial Heritage’; Sanjuan, Les Grands Hôtels.

[6] Clifford, ‘Travelling Cultures’, 101.

[7] Naguib, ‘Tales of Two Cities’, 130–31.

[8] Hajnóczi, ‘The Problems of Authenticity’, 36–40.

[9] Henderson, ‘Conserving Colonial Heritage’, 22; Naguib, ‘Tales of Two Cities’, 130–34.

[10] Choay, L’Allégorie, 145–47.

[11] Farag, The Palace; Raafat, Cairo, the Glory Years, 143–46; http://www.touregypt.net/magazine [accessed 6 June 2006].

[12] The Fish Garden was officially opened to the public in 1902.

[13] Soon after he had purchased the Gezira Palace, Habib Lotfallah Pasha received the title of prince from the sherif Hussein of Mecca. He died one year afterwards at the age of 95.

[14] Naguib, The Intangible Heritage, 7–9; ‘The Temporalities of Cultural Memory’, 183.

[15] Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.

[16] Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1–2, 44.

[17] Naguib, ‘Syncrétismes au féminin’.

[18] Amselle, Branchements; idem, ‘Métissage, branchement et triangulation des cultures’, 48; Turgeon, Patrimoines métissés, 23–25.

[19] de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien, 173.

[20] Naguib, ‘M⊘ter i det midtre rom’, 121–22.

[21] de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien, 50f.

[22] Amselle, Branchements.

[23] van Dommelen, ‘Colonial Matters’, 108.

[24] Said, Culture and Imperialism, 261.

[25] Chambers, ‘The Mediterranean’, 427.

[26] Albera, ‘Anthropology of the Mediterranean’; Albera et al., L’Anthropologie de la Méditerranée; Bromberger, ‘Towards an Anthropology of the Mediterranean’; Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea; Naguib, The Intangible Heritage of the Mediterranean.

[27] Bromberger, ‘Towards an Anthropology of the Mediterranean’, 96–98.

[28] Naguib, ‘Modelling a Cosmopolitan Womanhood’.

[29] Hamamsy, Zamalek; Naguib, ‘Modelling a Cosmopolitan Womanhood’.

[30] Farag, The Palace, 45.

[31] Naguib, ‘Modelling a Cosmopolitan Womanhood’; idem, ‘Perceiving Alexandria’, 38–42.

[32] Myntti, Paris along the Nile; Raafat, Cairo; Volait, Le Caire‐Alexandrie.

[33] Hamamsy, Zamalek, 140–81; Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism, 6; Naguib, ‘Modelling a Cosmopolitan Womanhood’.

[34] Today, the salamlek, which constitutes the central block of the hotel, is the only remaining part of the original building.

[35] Taken from Pflugradt‐Abdel Aziz, ‘Orientalism as an Economic Strategy’, 5.

[36] It is therefore ironic that most of von Diebitsch’s clients in Egypt were members of the cosmopolitan elite. His first patron was the banker Oppenheim, whom he had met at the London World Exhibition in 1862. In Europe, von Diebitsch’s success came with the prefabricated Moorish kiosk he constructed for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867. The kiosk stands today in the Linderhof Palace in Bavaria. Only two buildings remain to show von Diebitsch’s works in Cairo: the Gezira Palace or Marriott Hotel and the tomb of Suleyman Pasha al Fransawi, namely the famous Colonel de Sève. Diebitsch died of smallpox in Cairo in 1869.

[37] Volait, Le Caire‐Alexandrie.

[38] Hannerz, Transnational Connections, 102f.