Colonial legacies: Heritage and Tourism in Post-colonial Egypt
Heritage and tourism have always maintained an intimate and reciprocal relationship as heritage sites have been touristic attractions for centuries. This relationship is particularly intricate in colonial and postcolonial contexts where both heritage and tourism are deeply entangled not only with the development of the colonial project but with resistance and decolonization.
My showcase sought to explore colonial legacies in heritage conservation and foreign tourism, primarily Western tourism, in post-colonial Egypt. It aimed to examine the influence of Western tourism on heritage conservation and management practices, namely how the latter attempt to meet the expectations of the former which are rooted in the glorified colonial past. Focussing on the surroundings of monuments, the showcase problematised how these are often cleared to create ‘open-air museums’ and to curate ‘sanitised’ experiences for foreign tourists, often marginalizing local communities.
The showcase aimed to explore the intricate relationship between heritage and tourism in post-colonial Egypt. Heritage conservation in colonial Egypt was dominated by a colonial/foreign elites and institutions whose understanding and practices of heritage in many cases was incompatible with the local context. The showcase sought to highlight the persistence of some of these practices that prioritized the needs of monuments and tourists above those of local communities. This includes the prioritization of ‘monumental’ heritage over smaller commonplace heritage. It also entailed the clearing areas around monuments and heritage sites to create buffer zones to protect these sites and in some cases, to create ‘open-air museums’ for foreign tourists, while marginalizing local communities. This results in the simplification of a rich and complex local heritage into an often-reductive version for the consumption of foreign tourists.
This is of course a complicated issue that requires balancing the interests of foreign tourism, an important source of revenue for the Egyptian state, local development to meet the needs of local communities as well as the conservation of national heritage. However, postcolonial states often lean towards prioritizing western tourism and the way western tourists see and experience the world has a profound impact on how postcolonial states govern their citizens and territories to be safe tourists’ destinations. The clearances of the surroundings of monuments and heritage sites is just one of many strategies through which the state attempts to maintain the ‘myth of the unchanged’ (Echtner and Prasad, 2003), where tourists are invited on journey ‘back in time’ to relive the experiences of colonial-era archaeologist, adventurists and explorers in search for the ‘exotic’.
A poster invited visitors to reflect on the significance of the context of monuments and heritage sites and raised questions about how they should be approached and why: Should we preserve them? Should we clear them? Should we construct facilities for tourists? And why?
The exhibit also included a postcard collection titled ‘Pyramids in Context’ which were produced using the photos of talented Egyptian photographer Amir Makar showcasing the Pyramids of Giza, the most recognisable heritage site in Egypt, in their contemporary urban context in an attempt to challenge mainstream notions of Egyptian heritage as ‘frozen in time’.
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