Since the turn of the 21st century, an anxious presentism has taken hold of global politics.
Human beings are living through a deeply transitional moment characterised by a rise in authoritarian populism (Bugaric 2019) and a ‘brokenness of political reality’ that is both cause and effect (Wydra 2015a, p. 1) of the wicked problems that plague us, from the threat of nuclear warfare to the climate crisis. Infused with powers of annihilation, these crises suspend whole societies in uncertainty, requiring that we learn to live life in the transitional (Horváth, Thomassen, and Wydra 2017). Such extraordinary circumstances demand innovation of heritage critique, which lacks a framework for understanding cultural heritage amid the crisis of extreme forms of transition. This study presents an innovative approach to the problem, arguing for transferring the paradigm of contemporary liminality from political anthropology into heritage studies. Contemporary political anthropologists have adapted liminality’s ritual structure to wholesale experiences such as war, revolution, and transition, to understand these phenomena at the level of the communities living through them. Data are from Burma/Myanmar, where, since 1824, the difficult heritage of British colonial and military oppression and its concomitant heritage of civilian revolution has led to generations of overlapping transitional crises. Public commemoration of the atrocities endured might have provided Burmese people with the means for social recovery and transitional justice. Instead, enduring collective uncertainty has disrupted this potential. Cultural heritage is in the political fray amid transitional crises; as power shifts among competing political factions, its established meanings and symbols loosen. For those who learn to manipulate its interpretation, heritage becomes a tool for legitimising power or achieving empowerment amid extreme transition. The lens of contemporary liminality aids in deciphering these political uses of heritage and leads to a second innovation of this study – a new heritage taxonomy forged from transitional crisis.