THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COMMUNITY - SPECTACLES OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AT THE RHONDDA-HERITAGE-PARK

The representation of community entails a particular imagination of ti me, simultaneously chronological and subjective. The subjective sense of time is a central feature of heritage representational practice, wh ich utilizes reconstruction and spectacle to supplement the chronologi cal time of linear historiography with a plurality of personalized cam eos. A particular audio-visual heritage exhibition, Black Gold at the Rhondda Heritage Park, is discussed in terms of its representation of 'community time'. This is discussed in relation to Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity, in order to show the dependence of the trope of c ommunity on a particular homogenizing concept of time. Some of the rea sons why Black Gold imagines community in the particular ways describe d are suggested, with respect to the dialogic relations between these texts and the world 'outside' text in the local 'structure of feeling' and socio-economic context.