Borobudur and UNESCO

March 27, 2009

Above is an image of Borobudur in Java. The image is from an old photo book entitled Pictorial History of Civilization in Java by W.F. Stutterheim. The book is filled with old photos like this of the antiquities of Java. (I am still looking for an image of what the temple was like early in the 19th century before it was restored.) This old photo book with its photos of the antiquities of Java made me think more about the cultural distance between them and modern Indonesia. The population is now overwhelmingly Muslim and many of these temples and objects were obviously crafted by Buddhists. Java is also now part of the nation of Indonesia.. and a temple like this has now become part of the modern nation state.. the reach of which would surely have stunned medieval Javanese.

I located Borobudur on the website for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). Its best known initiative is the list of "World Heritage Sites." These can be browsed by nation:

The first site listed under Indonesia is Borobudur. The yellow diamond signifies its designation as a cultural site. It is natural that UNESCO should distribute sites according to host nation since it is an arm of the United Nations. And if the goal is to protect and preserve the non-movable cultural heritage of our world, then it's a necessity to work through nation states, who happen to control about every inch of dry ground on our planet.

While it may be a necessity to work through nation states, it is still inherently odd that Borobodur is claimed by the nation of Indonesia. One writer who understands well this oddness is philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah who a few years back had an article in the New York Review of Books on the topic of nations and cultural heritage ("Whose Culture Is It?" February 9, 2006):

...a great deal of what people wish to protect as "cultural patrimony" was made before the modern system of nations came into being, by members of societies that no longer exist. People die when their bodies die. Cultures, by contrast, can die without physical extinction. So there's no reason to think that the Nok have no descendants. But if Nok civilization came to an end and its people became something else, why should they have a special claim on those objects, buried in the forest and forgotten for so long? And even if they do have a special claim, what has that got to do with Nigeria, where, let us suppose, most of those descendants now live?

This is a question that could be applied directly to a site like Borobudur in Indonesia, although Appiah under plays the tendency for a culture to maintain itself even as religious structures come in and out of use. But the point is still true that Borobudur was a magnificent monument that stood completely neglected by the people who lived around it.. and it is questionable to what extent this can be thought of as "theirs."

Appiah would have us think about history in a more complex way. Buildings and objects come down to our own time after passing through numerous cultural configurations. There's no point in identifying "Nigerian" or "Indonesian" art.. at least as soon as one moves backwards a century or more. Then Appiah proposes a broader identity category by which a structure such as Borobudur could be appreciated: our identity as human beings.

One connection—the one neglected in talk of cultural patrimony—is the
connection not through identity but despite difference. We can respond to art that is not ours; indeed, we can only fully respond to "our" art if we move beyond thinking of it as ours and start to respond to it as art. But equally important is the human connection. My people—human beings— made the Great Wall of China, the Sistine Chapel, the Chrysler Building: these things were made by creatures like me, through the exercise of skill and imagination.

Appiah is arguing directly against the UNESCO concept of "cultural patrimony".. which is the basis for World Heritage Sites and their breakdown into nations. I, sitting here in Wisconsin, should be able to respond to Borobudur and these other examples of Indonesian art as creations of fellow human beings. This material "belongs" as much to me as to any Indonesian.

I had read this article before, but looking at it now I am struck by the closing emphasis on the importance of the imagination:

The connection through a local identity is as imaginary as the connection through humanity. The Nigerian's link to the Benin bronze, like mine, is a connection made in the imagination; but to say this isn't to pronounce either of them unreal. They are surely among the realest connections we have.

In other words, sure, this connection to another culture through a common humanity is imagined. It is the biggest "imagined community" possible! But the nation-state is also an imagined community and its connection to the past equally tenuous. The philosophy of culture being worked out by Appiah is the perfect philosophy for the kind of imagined travel that I am trying to work out in these posts. It is philosophy that can function as our gate.