Patrimônios culturais e seus significados na contemporaneidade

um estudo sobre o lugar das experiências nas representações do passado

Abstract

This article presents a study about the cultural heritage of Santa Teresa’s/ES county, recognized by Law nº 13,617/2018 as the pioneer of Italian immigration in Brazil. Based on dialogue with productions by Walter Benjamin, we focus on certain groups’ manifestations from that location in relation to representations that symbolize stories and memories of the immigration process, especially the Casa Lambert. Considering the decline of experiences in modernity, a characteristic phenomenon of capitalist society, we problematize ways of appropriating culture as a spectacle and marketable object. Faced with the so-called “glass culture” (Benjamin, 2012), in which subjects are constantly exposed to a supposedly homogeneous and idealized past, we reflect on the tendency to transform cultural heritage into phantasmagoria, which includes social uprooting and devaluation of experiences lived collectively.