Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused primarily on material heritage, whose risk of damage and disappearance is accelerating due to growing environmental crises. After Japan’s 2011 tsunami, however, heritage scholars there began probing a related question: what happens when supposedly ‘intangible’ heritage is damaged? Taking this question as a starting point, I ask how recent applications of assemblage theory in studies of heritage can shed light on destruction's role in forming and reforming places and peoples. Drawing on fieldwork in Japan’s disaster regions, I argue that disassembly is a form of damage rendering both the things mediating heritage and its reciprocal mediation of social life matters of concern. I suggest that the potential of loss lies in how heritage can be made to translate other interests during its reassembly. By contrast, attempts to perpetuate pre-existing relations can render the social more rather than less precarious, depending on the context.

中文翻译：

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无形损失的潜力：在日本灾后重组遗产和重建社会

长期以来，人们对文化遗产的态度一直以与防止损失有关的“危险敏感性”为特征。然而，最近，批判性遗产学者认为，损失可以产生，促进新价值观和依恋的形成。他们的论点主要集中在物质遗产上，由于日益严重的环境危机，其破坏和消失的风险正在加速。然而，在 2011 年日本海啸之后，那里的遗产学者开始探讨一个相关的问题：当所谓的“非物质”遗产遭到破坏时会发生什么？以这个问题为出发点，我询问最近在遗产研究中应用组合理论如何能够阐明破坏在形成和改造地方和人民中的作用。借鉴日本灾区的实地考察，我认为，拆解是一种破坏形式，使得调解遗产的事物及其对社会生活的相互调解都成为关注的焦点。我认为损失的可能性在于遗产如何在重组过程中转化为其他利益。相比之下，试图使先前存在的关系永久化可能会使社会更加不稳定，而不是更加不稳定，这取决于上下文。