Construed Heritage

In Construed Heritage, Jennifer Goddard examines heritage through a construal lens and emphasizes cognitive distance as a potential tool for evaluating heritage experiences. Goddard argues that memory consumes and retains heritage experiences as cognitive objects that are collected and curated into personal narratives.

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Heritage theory places individual experiences in a precarious position. Representational approaches draw attention to socio-political contexts and ethical considerations but largely render the self silent. Affective approaches, on the other hand, develop meaningful components of the emotive and sensed self, but internalized and unmitigated heritage runs the risk of perpetuating oppressive constructs. In Construed Heritage, Jennifer Goddard argues that heritage experiences can be viewed as subjective-objective relationships and analyzed through discursive and figurative construal level distances. Goddard contends that memory consumes and retains heritage experiences as cognitive objects that are collected and curated into personal narratives.