BULGARIAN-SPEAKING MUSLIMS - Lalev

“[I]t has become conventional wisdom,” W. Fitzhugh Brundage posits, “that memory [as
heritage] is inextricably bound up with group [community] identity.” 7 Both material and symbolic
heritage is constructed by people to indicate their belonging to a community—town, neighborhood,
minority group, nation, region—in a way that reflects their idealized perception of self. Heritage is
always claimed by someone. In the process of appropriating it, people shape and transform heritage
according to their need for an identity that is innocent, noble, virtuous, and glorious. Heritage, for its
creator, is never vicious or fictitious, but always good and truthful. Whereas for the dominant group
in society the validation of a noble identity is a statement of power, for the underprivileged
communities it becomes a campaign to assert an acceptable identity. 8
Identity, Peter Howard opines, is one of the central components of heritage. 9 In his book,
Heritage, the author’s specifies that heritage always reflects (1) a person- or group’s search for
identity; (2) it is people’s interpretation of the past; and, (3) once heritage has entered the public
domain, 10 it requires management. 11 All humans, according to the author, share a drive to preserve
things that are of value to them. Heritage is, therefore, the universal human quest for a comfortable
sense of self whereby the members of a community negotiate their identity with the rest in society
and among themselves. The community then affirms their constructed identity (1) through symbolic
commemoration of selected events or heroic person(s) from the past, and (2) through material
manifestations of heritage, including historic buildings and sites, monuments, written records, public
festivities, rituals, and traditions.
Accordingly, three fundamental techniques of constructing an acceptable sense of self can be
gleaned from Brundage’s analytical account of Acadian culture in Louisiana: namely, (1) creating an
idealized past by validating myths (idealization); (2) authenticating the past by identifying material
7 W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 3.
8 Ibid., 1-28 & 271-98.
9 Peter Howard, Heritage: Management, Interpretation, Identity (London: Continuum International Publishing
Group, 2003), passim.
10 The junction where heritage is being presented to the public via exhibits, battle reenactments, vintage car- or
building restoration, heritage sites, and other activities.
11 I.e. the practical execution of heritage interpretation.
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