Heritage Mobilisation as Radical Politics in a Left-Wing Social Movement

Abstract

Left-wing movements are said to invest mainly in class struggle to address global capitalism and the growing dominance by the far right. Recent left-wing movements, however, increasingly invest in culture. This article explores this investment with a focus on the mobilisation of heritage (historical architecture, cultural traditions, histories, and narratives). Through the case of Dresden’s No-Pegida movement, I show that heritage is an often-unrecognised sphere of mobilising radical politics from the left. Attention to how the left mobilises heritage can indicate that investments in culture occur in intersectional and transversal ways. This article uses examples from a qualitative study of No-Pegida to discuss heritage mobilisation in demonstrations and community work. I show that heritage comes to matter for the left when responding to heritage populism from the far right. The left’s heritage mobilisation can be understood as a refusal of authoritarian populism and an opposition to the far right’s spatial cleansing attempts. It is further an important step for reconfiguring the local creative middle-class through the inclusion of refugee and migrant artists and for centring subaltern philosophies about culture.