The heritage of potentiality and hope in times of despair

This paper introduces ways of approaching heritage as future-oriented through the concepts of hope and potentiality. The future is today increasingly being described in dystopian terms, related to multiple global crises. In these times, the capacity to take a proactive stand towards more hopeful futures – even if they may seem beyond likelihood – is more needed than ever. By connecting several fields that seldom meet, this paper develops a way of conceptualising heritage that is focused on how it can serve as a vehicle to imagine and move towards hopeful futures. The study draws upon and connect relevant ideas and concepts from critical futures studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and heritage studies. The paper argues that through attempts of redeeming past potentials that persist as ghosts haunting the present, heritage can stimulate actions towards hopeful futures. Even when past potentials can never be fully realised, partial realisation tends to breed new hope. This conceptualisation of heritage is not focused on restoration by using an idealised past as a blueprint for a better future. Instead, it is a critical and reflective way of using heritage to carve out a future of radical difference and invest such a future with hope.