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Abstract: This paper presents a combined analysis of two key issues which are currently at the centre of the field of social sciences: the awarding of heritage status and the politicisation of the past. This will be done by through an unusual lens: namely the work of anthropologists like Sahlins and Julien, and of philosophical historians like Loraux and Rancière. Above all we will examine how words are used in scientific publications on these two key issues, in particular by analysing forms of appropriation that arise in cultural heritage contexts. We will link these analyses to the two-pronged nature that every architectural document carries with it, a two-pronged nature that makes heritage granting practices and their possible politicisation a practically unique case-study of what is an almost ontological problem in cultural heritage: that of the aims of a policy intended to rescue monuments, houses, factories, distributors and furniture from a state of oblivion. The paper contains numerous references to a wide range of literary sources, helping to identify a possible direction for current research on cultural heritage.

Keywords: Heritage Capitalization; Testimony; Memory; History; Heritage