Verso una concezione ecologica di patrimonio culturale: riflessioni sulle forme culturali della memoria pubblica

There is a long tradition in the Italian context of enhancement and conservation in all the different areas of the cultural heritage. However, its communicative dimensions, and the social competences involved in the ways in which cultural heritage can become a crucial resource (in the processes of inscription of public memory within the national public discourse) sometimes tend to remain in the background and to be investigated with less attention than what would be needed. I start here from the consideration that making public memory through the artistic and cultural forms made available by the cultural heritage represents a very fundamental and constitutive dimension for the democratic fabric of a nation. This contribution proposes an ecological vision of the concept of cultural heritage, also aimed at highlighting precisely its intrinsic capacity to make memory work and, at the same time, to build democracy.