Statement of Research Plan Heritage Preservation & Afghan National Identity:
A Counter-Narrative to Essentializing and Homogenizing
Discourses of Afghanyat (Afghan-ness)

Context: It is said by the likes of G.A. Clark that identity is “written on the wind” and therefore ephemeral and devoid of essence. I certainly do not contest the fact that identity is a product of sociality and, therefore, a constructed phenomenon. What I wish to unsettle is the notion that discourses of national identity unfailingly suffer from the error of essentialism. What I mean by this is simply that unified national identities are not inherently essentialist. In fact, national identity may be defined by heterogeneity and the amalgamation of disparate forms. Nancy Dupree, an American-Afghan historian, asserts that “despite pride of origin, despite episodes of friction, despite plays for power, despite self-serving ethnocentric panegyrics by individuals, a sense of belonging, of being Afghan, is evident among the population at large” (978). Indeed, Afghan identity has always been a hyphenated identity. An identity claimed by all. A prefix to ethnic designations and religious identifiers. By extension, the Afghan heritage is a material manifestation of cultural variability. Thus, if identity is written on the wind, then I assert that in the Afghan context, transient identities are also written upon the land, carved into stone to shape statues, erected as minarets, and buried as shards of poetry in the soil. Afghanyat is synonymous with multiformity. What happens when attempts are made to sand off the projections of this unevenness? What happens when a “zone of intercommunication” becomes the echo chamber for one voice? What happens when archeologists buy into the narrative presented by that singular voice?

This project aims to reconcile constructivist notions of identity formation (as posited by Matthew Liebman), Afghan national heterogeneity, and the discourses around heritage preservation. What I am resisting is the notion that a mixed or polymorphous identity implies the irreconcilability of notions surrounding heritage and its preservation. Such a position is best represented by the following passage in Reinhart Bernbeck’s “Heritage Politics: Learning from Mullah Omar,” where he states:

"Afghanistan is often called a ‘buffer state’ (e.g., Rubin 1995:18-21), as it was the arbitrary creation of a ‘no-empire's land’ between the czarist territories and British India. It is more appropriate to call this political entity a ‘negative state’ or a ‘nonnation,’ in which a number of regions with unconnected histories were assembled in order not to belong. The history of this geographically random configuration is simply a ‘no-man’s-land nationalism.’ By employing nation-based heritage concepts, Western discourse produces the fiction of a nation-state in order to give the impression that the Taliban have robbed ‘the Afghans’ of their identity, setting up at the same time a boundary between ‘Afghans’ and the Taliban as non-Afghan, extraterritorial group located outside of social space (Matsuura 2001:12). Imagery, memory, and history are based on national unity from an inextricable web of linkages that are mobilized to reaffirm the fictive unity of a nation constructed hitherto through imperialist practices. Archeologists such as Kohl and Wright subscribe to these ideas, hoping that ‘civic nationalism takes root, [so that] Afghans should be made aware and proud of the incredibly rich archeological remains of all periods and cultures interred in the Afghan soil’ (2006:251). Such scholarly disclosure promotes an identity-based relation to past remains. Others have warned against the effects of exactly this process, as it once again turns monuments into ‘targets of negative attention’ (Golden 2004:199)."

While I do appreciate Bernbeck’s attempt to unsettle the universalization of heritage and the politics surrounding its management, through my exploration, I will explain the ways in which Afghan people have adopted the politics of preservation not as a way to connect to some distant past but rather to resist present homogenization and genocidal aims of the Talib regime. While it is true that the Taliban mustn’t be characterized as non-Afghans, it is also true that their brand of kulturpolitic is also fueled by political and ethnic aims of domination and essentialization of a heterogeneous Afghan identity. Similarly, I object to prescriptive notions that define what the Afghan public ought to value or be proud of. Certainly, it was not the devaluing of heritage on the part of the Afghan public that led to the destruction of the buddhas but rather a regime’s blatant disregard for public opinion. In reality, native sources from the local inhabitants of Bamyan valley denote national grief over the destruction of their landscape. As Dupree puts it, “many may be weak in their knowledge of history, but the Bamiyan Buddhas were treasured by all. Some described their feelings after the destruction as equal to what they might feel on losing a beloved grandfather” (968). Indeed, destruction of any sort is found objectionable by the Afghan public who have suffered great losses over the past century. Therefore, my project intervenes in western discourses surrounding Afghan identity and heritage to offer a logic of preservation based on a rejection of destruction and a celebration of landscape and heritage heterogeneity. While the buddhas did not represent any linkage to a modern cultural group, they stood for something far greater: the longue durée of Afghan history that negates totalizing and Islamatizing narratives of the present.

Present Implications: The collapse of the Afghan government in 2021 and the forcible reinstatement of the Taliban present the risk of a co-opted national identity and history as well as the deterioration of the structures set in place for the protection of heritage i.e. the Afghan National Museum, the Afghan Institute of Archaeology established in the 1960s and 70s which has already been shut down, the Kabul Univerity Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, the Afghan National Archive, and international collaborators/donors. Diversifying conceptions of national identity and heritage serve to promote global advocacy for the representation of Afghan public interests, which is currently under siege by the Talib/Pashtun ethnic and religious puritanical minority. Furthermore, emphasizing heterogeneity will also have ethical implications for cultivating notions of collective healing across the diverse Afghan diaspora.

Questions: How does a discussion of Afghan heritage and identity unsettle essentialist notions of national homogeneity? What are the current implications of political non-representation and lack of public interest advocacy in decisions about Afghan heritage? What must the international archaeological community consider when engaging in discussions of heritage preservation in the Afghan context; what do Afghans have to offer archeologists with an interest in Afghanistan?

Materials:
Three major academic discourses: Bernbeck’s notions of non-distinctive Afghan identity, Dupree’s notion of distinctive Afghan identity, and Liebman’s arguments around essentialism/constructivism.

Primary research - visits to the Afghan National Museum by local contact (May 25th and Oct. 6th, 2022)