Response to Holtorf’s Alternative Futures

It is always a pleasure to engage with Cornelius Holtorf’s provocations regarding cultural heritage, how it is used, and what it means. In this current piece Holtorf is arguing for cultural heritage to be mobilized for peace rather than war and while the context is set against a backdrop of Swedish reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the argumentation follows a long-running theme of Holtorf’s that argues for cultural heritage to be reconceptu-alized away from protecting and preserving materials associated with the past. Rather, he argues here that our conceptions of cultural heritage should focus on meaning, the future, and utilized to facilitate peace. While there are many interesting and compelling points in this piece – I especially enjoyed the section on the potential for utilizing heritage for ‘future-making’ through future literacy, which acknowledges that we do not know what the future will be like and therefore must actively and creatively imagine it as different from the present. Such argu-ments are based on hope for a better future and in the desire to activate heritage at times of crisis – not to reinforce boundaries and separation – but as ‘a future of hope for people’.