Foucault, human rights, and moralist ranting, all in the New York Times.

Our in-class discussion about the status of cultural heritage, the preservation of cultural heritage and the role heritage plays in the scheme of human rights, is reflected in today's New York Times article on preservation and development in New York. Far too long to completely summarize, the article focuses on the conflicts in the Greenwich village part of NYC, where the Landsmarks Commission is often stuck between the turf wars of preservationists and real estate developers.

The developers claim that "Landmarking is one of the best tools that anti-development people have in this city — it’s a very long, political process", whereas preservationists insist that so little of the City has actually been landmarked that it doesn't pose any actual economic threat to the interests of the developers.

This leads into my argument about the status of heritage protection. Clearly, as we saw today in class, while there may be a tacit agreement that, in general, cultural heritage is valuable, it's exact location in the "hierarchy" of human rights (or simply rights) becomes complicated. Is it as universal as the right to live? What about the right to healthcare? How does one negotiate when one of the rights comes into conflict with another one?

The problem is that instead of actually having that discussion, the argument "well, how do we reconcile different rights" is actually often used to ignore the problem alltogether. In the case of the New York real-estate developers, the argument for economic profit is used to throw heritage completely out of the window. Instead of looking for ways to integrate the old and the new (which the Landscape Commission suggests), looking for alternative sites that do not require razing valuable buildings etc, the developers are essentially claiming that these sites prevent (economic) development and thus should be done away with. Baby and the bathwater, as they say.

Of course the economic losses compared to the heritage losses are completely marginal, of course there is more to sustainable human development than economics, and finally, of course even talking about heritage in economic terms means translating the issue into a fundamentally different conflict that, one could argue, is essentially a subversive use of power relations, in a foucaultian perspective, removing the actual issue of two parties negotiating over different interests that both relate to certain rights that the perceive themselves as having, and making it into an issue of economics, in which those with economic interests and economic power clearly have the upper hand.

I would like to say that is as unexpected as it is disappointing, but clearly, unexpected it is not. In fact, the translation of cultural heritage into economic terms is more of a rule than an exception (can you say "Christie's"?), but for a glimmer of hope there is this message from the City's deputy mayor: "We don’t think about development without thinking about preservation,” she said in an e-mail message. (She agreed to reply only to questions submitted in writing.) “During a time of unprecedented growth, preservation has always been front and center.”

Let's just hope the actions live up to the words.