Absence/presence and the ontological politics of heritage: the case of Barrack 57

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 attention and led to the barn’s association with a Nazi Second World War transit camp and with Anne Frank. Its material destruction made this barn/barrack both present and absent in various networks. We use the case of Barrack 57 to study the interplay between presence/absence and non-existence of objects in these networks, 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 therefore is based on different concepts developed in actor network theory and Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems. Of particular importance is Luhmann’s distinction between first- and second-order observation. We argue that heritage objects themselves are the result of different enactments of (non) human properties in various relational configurations. With this view, a new task for critical heritage scholars emerges. Understanding the dynamics of presence/absence and non-existence of heritage objects in different networks 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

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff of Memorial Centre Camp Westerbork for sharing information 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 Second World War who passed through Kamp Westerbork and were willing to share some of their most difficult memories with us.

Notes

1. 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 longer what it was thought to be. Recently, questions had emerged within the Memorial Centre about whether the burned down barn had indeed been Barrack 57. Maps and building 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.