“Dark” Heritage? Nudging the Discussion

Radical Left Culture and Heritage, the Politics of Preservation and Memorialisation, and the Promise of the Metaverse

“…The ultimate goal is to attain absolute freedom through (1) dismantling the repressive institutions that overpower the capacity of oppressed people to control their destiny, (2) reclamation of political, economic, cultural, social, environmental, and technological sovereignty, and (3) deployment of a range of tools at different junctures ranging from labour strike action to educational projects to citizen development programmes to cultural resistance to armed struggle [32,53,54]. Amidst the pursuit of these key goals, however, liberation struggles have also involved racialisation, human depravity, extreme suffering, war atrocities, and severe loss of human lives-leaving legacies in places that have been termed 'difficult heritage' or 'dark heritage' 5 [55][56][57]. Amílcar Cabral's seismic, decolonisation project, which we will return to later, offers a useful illustration of how liberation struggles can be efficacious as leftist critical interventions-despite operating in extremely hostile circumstances.…”

“…Indeed, observations in existing Metaverse-type environments have shown that this experience would not only help connect users to one another in the fully developed Metaverse, but also to 'the pain and suffering of [others in a way that] is difficult to describe in words [but effectively elicits real emotions]' [57] (p. 72). I argue further that metaversal interaction with '[t]he painful and problematic aspects [of the Pidgiguiti event would not only appeal to those whose immediate families suffered devastating loss, but also FA users and other constituencies who] wish to reconcile emotionally with [the event perhaps as descendants of Portuguese colonialists or those that merely have] a general fascination with the macabre that [was perpetrated by European colonialism on the African continent but continues to be hidden and/or silenced in hegemonic historical records]' [56] (p. 164).…”

“…As such, people deal with, and respond to, dark heritage in different ways. From a touristic point of view, some people travel to sites of dark heritage (or engage extensively with pasts of such sites virtually) out of pure fascination with the acts of barbarity and savagery that are known to have been perpetrated there [56]. Others engage with dark heritage out of an urge to find out as much as possible about the extent of the pain and suffering that victims are known to have felt and endured [57].…”