Abstract
This thesis explores the mobility and deterritorialisation of the Spanish artform flamenco as intangible cultural heritage (ICH), focusing on its transnational and transcultural dimensions. Flamenco, inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (RL) in 2010, serves as a compelling case study to interrogate how ICH evolves and transforms, as it detaches from its geographical roots, while simultaneously challenging institutionalised discourses that work to freeze and fossilise it as a cultural artefact. The study examined three key questions: the persistence of the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) in flamenco’s institutional recognition, the framing of non-Spanish practitioners within heritage narratives, and the meanings that Australia-based practitioners of the artform assign to notions of authenticity and tradition in a deterritorialised locale. The study’s empirical findings were derived from a mixed-method qualitative design: a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the Nomination File for the inscription of flamenco on the RL and two Periodic Reports submitted to UNESCO by the Government of Spain; and a narrative inquiry that engaged Australia-based flamenco practitioners.Drawing epistemologically from critical heritage studies, intercultural studies, and international relations, the CDA method critiqued the AHD’s portrayal of flamenco as a static, territorially bound cultural expression, showing how the discursive construction of flamenco as ICH reinforces exclusionary narratives and essentialises understandings of authenticity, and of ICH community. Findings from the CDA revealed that while institutional narratives of flamenco draw rhetorically on notions of ‘inclusivity’, ‘universality’ and ‘hybridity’, they paradoxically reinforce and legitimise restrictive notions of historical and cultural continuity that fail to account for cultural change and contestation. Moreover, the AHD positioned practitioners outside Spain as passive consumers of the artform, undermining their agency and creative contributions to flamenco’s evolution.
The narrative inquiry, drawing on cultural hybridity and liminality frameworks, examined how Australia-based flamenco practitioners navigate the tension between preserving traditional forms and embracing innovation in deterritorialised contexts. The findings serve to illustrate the fluid and transitional spaces where flamenco is continuously reimagined and transformed, revealing the creative possibilities that arise when cultural boundaries are crossed or blurred. Practitioners’ narratives collectively construct a superdiverse understanding of flamenco as ICH – one that acknowledges the dynamic and adaptive nature of the artform as it is continuously reshaped by those who perform, teach, and transmit it in new socio-cultural environments.
The collective findings of the study underscore the need for more flexible, adaptive and inclusive understandings of ICH ‘community’, that are able to respond to and address the realities of mobility, hybridity, and innovation that characterise deterritorialised ICH practices, as in the case of flamenco. The analysis calls for a paradigm shift in how UNESCO and States Parties to the 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, when nominating their ICH for inscription on the RL, conceptualise and engage with ICH communities that are transnational in character. The case of flamenco as a deterritorialised form of ICH highlights the need for safeguarding efforts that embrace, rather than resist, change – ensuring that hybridity, fluidity, and the agency of practitioners in diverse global contexts are recognised not as liabilities but as essential to flamenco’s endurance, transmission, and creative renewal.
| Date of Award | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Marilyn Mitchell (Supervisor) & Rosita Dellios (Supervisor) |