VIRTUAL London Heritages Conference

Abstract

Western humanist definitions of heritage value serve to protect diverse cultural treasures while also serving the colonial state and its ongoing investment in the carceral industrial complex. The administration of heritage and development in Canada, for example, contributes to the broader project of erasing the lives of criminalized people and advancing colonial logics. Meanwhile, cultural heritage that forms in resistance to colonial narratives thrives without the recognition of official heritage status. The commercial redevelopment of the Prison for Women (P4W) in Kingston/Katarokwi, Canada, is an example of a site where state administration of heritage exposes itself as serving carceral-capitalist demands. In stark contrast, cultural practices (also known as “Intangible Cultural Heritage”) that claim the same site as their origin are powerful sources of healing for people who survive, and continue to resist, the violence of the colonial heritage of Canada. Discussions between the City of Kingston and the developers who purchased the shuttered property about development plans for P4W have focused on the protection of “heritage values” rooted in colonial notions of property, use-value, and civility. Intangible Cultural Heritage, such as storytelling and song, events and ceremony – all activities which continue to flourish on and in relation to the site of P4W – are disregarded and denied in these discussions in an attempt to cleanse the site of any association with the generations of prisoners whose lives are entangled with the history of the prison. This paper examines both colonial definitions of heritage value as it pertains to the development of the former P4W, and counter-civilizational cultural practices that have historically emerged from this site and continue to thrive.