Heritage erasure and heritage transformation: how heritage is created by destruction in Bahrain

Abstract

This article suggests that heritage erasure is also heritage transformation. The article is an analysis of alternative contemporary heritage processes in the Arab Gulf state Bahrain. I use three cases to illustrate the diversity of what heritage means in Bahrain and how heritage is transformed through erasure. First, I discuss the vast burial mound fields of ancient Dilmun, which in the process of their destruction due to modern development have been appropriated as some of the most significant national heritage of the Bahrain state. Secondly, I point to a heritage allegedly neglected by the state, the religious shrines of the Shia community, which to this group signify an alternative heritage and history of the islands. Finally, I discuss a potential heritage of the future, based on the recent destruction by Bahraini authorities of the Pearl Monument, which was the centre of the 2011 uprising in Bahrain as part of the so-called Arab Spring. Besides their political differences, the three cases are three different modes of engaging the past, either as past preserved, as a living past in the present or as a past that will change the future.