ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the features of a discourse of hidden heritage, charting the way it construct notions of heritage and user engagements with it. It focuses on the function of hidden heritage and thinks through its ‘ontological politics’ – the power to define what is present and absent in the heritage field. The chapter considers the discourse of hidden heritage as a representational practice through which heritage is produced and circulated. Discourses are spread across multiple texts and shape how people engage with heritage. Hidden heritage is often represented as concealed beneath a physical or cultural surface. The discourse of hidden heritage is interplay of a visible and invisible heritage, a represented and a non-representable heritage, a revealed and concealed heritage. The process of engaging with hidden heritage is constructed as a journey to possess a valuable, but inert, object.
