AUTHENTICATING DESTRUCTION, RECONSTRUCTING AUTHENTICITY

The following paragraph istaken from the guidelinesfor the long-term safeguard-ing of the World Heritage Site, recommended by the Hue–UNESCO worksafeguard-ing group at its eighth session, August 1995. Entitled ‘Maintaining historical authen-ticity of the monuments’, the guidelines state:

In spite of past damage to a number of buildings by both human and natural causes, the Hue World Heritage Site is characterized by the large number of original buildings still remaining. The environment surrounding the palaces, pagodas and tombs, despite several impacts has not been too severely degraded nor altered by modern development. Hue isnot only historically correct, it is original. It isextremely important to maintain thisoriginal and historically cor-rect character of Hue and not to dilute it with reconstructions of buildings which have now disappeared or by renovations which do not preserve the orig-inal features. Authenticity appliesto materialsand techniques, functionsand use, as well as to form and design.

The key termsin the above paragraph are ‘original’, ‘authentic’ and ‘historically correct’, with emphasis placed on the fact that despite several impacts (of war and modern development) the authenticity of Hue monumentshave, thusfar, not been too altered, deformed, diluted or destroyed. In this static view of history, the meaning of the site is condensed and confined to a particular point in time and space. Though the guidelines elsewhere suggest that ‘the disappearance of [a]

building is in itself part of the history of the site’; the emphasis is on the recovery and preservation of the ‘original’.

The paragraph more subtly encodes different readings of human and natural causesof damage to the original. In particular, human actsof destruction are excluded as somehow extrinsic to the site. Natural causes of damage are, by con-trast, read as an intrinsic feature of the landscape within which the site is located.

Thisprocessof filtration can again be seen in the different waysin which site damage is narrated in official discourse. In 1981, in the same speech in which Hue wasdescribed asa ‘masterpiece of urban poetry’, the then Director General of UNESCO included a short account of the causes of destruction to ‘one of the supreme expressions of Vietnamese creativity’. First among these was what was described as ‘one of the cruellest wars in history’. Listed second were various natu-ral causes of destruction (25 November 1981, Hanoi, Appendix 1, UNESCO International Campaign).

By 1995, the emphasis had completely changed. In the most recent Hue–

UNESCO working party documents, the need for conservation and reconstruc-tion is laid out in the secreconstruc-tion entitled ‘Factors of deteriorareconstruc-tion’ (secreconstruc-tion 2.2 of the 1995 progress report on the UNESCO International Campaign). Already one can see in the replacement of the term destruction with deterioration, a particular reor-dering of things. This is borne out in the list that follows: it begins with ‘general natural factors’, which includes a lengthy discussion of the tropical monsoon cli-mate, the high humidity and exposure to large amounts of ‘solar radiation’. A note is made of the propensity to serious flooding ‘analogous to those registered in the historical chronicles, given the high annual rainfall an proximity of the Perfume River’ (1995: 15). Finally a note is made of how prone Hue is to tropical storms.⁴

From this general description of ‘natural factors’, the report goes on to ‘specific natural factors’, again listing humidity, rain, rising damp and condensation. Next on the list is ‘vegetation’. The report states, ‘High humidity … combined with 30

yearsof neglect hasresulted in considerable damage to buildingsin the Hue com-plex by unwanted vegetation. Thisincludestreesand larger plantswhose roots damage foundations, water plantschoking canalsand drainage, aswell ascultivated plants by farmers’ (1995: 16). Fungus is also listed, followed by a short paragraph discussing insect infestations, such as white ants, and the need to determine the dif-ferent ways in which various insect species affect difdif-ferent building materials.

Finally, after two and a half pages’ discussion of various natural causes of deteri-oration, point 2.2.6 lists ‘war damage’, stating: ‘Extensive damage to the city of Hue and the surrounding area encompassing the Citadel, the Imperial City and the Royal Tombs was caused by fighting during the past 100 years.’

The document goes on to list what are described as the ‘three major disastrous incidents which caused the majority of the destruction’. The first is the mutiny of the bastion of Mang Ca in 1885, between French troops and the Nguyen court.

The second is the fire in January 1947, which burned almost the entire central sec-tion of the imperial city (including the Forbidden Purple City) and the third isthe 1968 Tet Offensive.

All of thisservesto reinforce the point made earlier about the way in which the particular history of destruction is being reconfigured at the Hue monuments.

However, I suggest that the foregrounding of the tropical climate is not simply a way of covering over acknowledged ‘disastrous effects of war’, but rather, funda-mentally about the way in which distinction is drawn between the natural and the human. The enumeration of all the variousconditionswhich affect the monu-ments, from humidity to wood ants, further situates the site within the natural landscape. It is the particular balance and harmony between the built environment and the natural landscape which is seen as a defining feature of the site’s aesthetic and one of the thingswhich isseen to make it worthy of listing asa World Heritage Site. Hence, while the effectsof the natural environment are outlined at great length, they are not in any fundamental sense seen as damaging or threatening the meaning or significance of the site: they are if anything further evidence of the nat-ural locatedness of the site. Natnat-ural processes of decay and deterioration are, in other words, as much symbolically as they are physically containable.

By contrast, effects of human action which do not correspond to the aesthetic of the site become gradually reduced to a footnote, written out of the picture. Obvi-ously war represents the complete antithesis to the balanced order that the site is supposed to represent: the rubble of war, literally and figuratively, matter out of place (Douglas1966). It isnot just war, however, which in thisschema isconsid-ered out of category. What is interesting is the way in which present-day social prac-tices, namely tourists and tourism, are similarly placed in relation to the site and monuments.

A presentation by a UNESCO consultant for the Hue Monuments and Con-servation Centre (Peters1995) beginsby locating Hue within the larger landscape of the ‘ancient’ civilizations of Asia whose traditions span thousands of years.

While praising the increasing emphasis on archaeology and conservation that grows out of a ‘strong emphasis on national pride and identity’, she criticizes the impact of tourism. While recognizing that tourism is one of the reasons for the

growth of archaeology, she suggests it is for all the wrong reasons and with poten-tially devastating consequences. The pressure created by tourism means that often monumentsare restored inaccurately without meticulousresearch. More-over, ‘in addition to sloppy and inappropriate restoration, the pressures of tourism bring additional, and perhapseven more seriousdangers– the tourists themselves!’

The metaphors used for describing the negative impact of tourists frequently draw analogies with the destruction brought by war. This can again be seen in some of the recent reportage on Hue, with titlessuch as‘Hue facesnew onslaught’, and in presentations in UNESCO workshops, such as that given by a former adviser to the Ford Foundation in Vietnam, now vice-president of a tourist company, Nam Enterprises, who states:

At that time [when he waswith the Ford Foundation] Viet Nam wasat war.

No one needsto explain the threat war posesto irreplaceable cultural monu-ments. Now, 20 odd yearslater, although Viet Nam enjoysthe peace itspeople deserve, its needs in the area of cultural preservation are arguably even more pressing.

(Benoit 1995)

Drawing an analogy between war and tourism works, I suggest, because both are seen asan encroachment of the well ordered and harmoniouslandscape by the chaotic and disordered: the unpredictability both of human action, but also as importantly of human readingsand imagination, which potentially threaten the meaning and significance of the site. In this, as in other presentations made as part of variousHue–UNESCO working party workshops, change islocated not asan intrinsic part of the cultural landscape, but as something which is extrinsic, exter-nally imposed, and which is seen as potentially ungovernable.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION(S): ON NARRATIVE