Memory, Heritage and Identity. Intercultural Dialogue in the Higher Education

At the core of this theme is the question about what we maintain from the past and how. Our approach to the past implies historic differentiation and conscious selection. Those elements of the past which become heritage are the result of our choices in the present. Not every historical record becomes heritage because it may not fit into the specific need of contemporaneity. However, the present is constantly changing, which consequently affects our management of the past and of heritage. Moreover, when we select items from the past and we grant them the possibility of becoming heritage, we exclude and forget other items, which are thus doomed to disappear from the specific historic narrative that we are creating for ourselves. Heritage, as a (visual) realization of memory is, thus, tightly linked to the idea of canon (Graham & Howard, 2008: 6).The construction of memory by selection and exclusion of unwanted elements is a key moment in the formation and establishment of identity. By turning into identity, the past offers validation and legitimation to the present, contributing to the strengthening of the national discourse in its relationship to surrounding cultures and states. The intricate dynamics of national identification and preservation of international history in the approach to heritage is also extremely significant in this regard. The theme of the paper is to try to identify main parameters on which it is possible to found the intercultural dialogue about heritage, memory and identity. The aim of the article is to define the main aspects that are able to support the higher education and, more in general, to sustain the intercultural dialog on themes as memory, heritage and identity, strictly connected with each own culture.