On Ephemeral Memory Politics, Conservationist International Law and (In-)alienable Value of Art in Lucas Lixinski’s Legalized Identities: Cultural Heritage Law and the Shaping of Transitional Justice

This article offers a critical review of the monograph written by Lucas Lixinski, entitled, "Legalized Identities: Cultural Heritage Law and the Shaping of Transitional Justice" (Cambridge 2021). The review begins with a summarised outline of the book chapters, followed by two sections devoted to an analysis of Lixinski’s work. The first section highlights the indisputable contribution Lixinski’s monograph makes to fields beyond that of international law of cultural heritage. This contribution lies in his construction of a heuristic bridge which connects the field of cultural heritage with memory studies broadly and with the adjacent field of memory laws more specifically. The author then takes this construction a step further by skilfully paving said bridge with elements of transitional justice and decorating it with diverse examples, ranging from several continents. The second section places Lixinski’s approach under a critical lens, exposing how his advocated magnification of transitional justice over aesthetics in the plethora of legitimate societal interests – protected by the current regime of cultural heritage – can tile a dangerous path towards censorship, further political instrumentalization of international law, and even iconoclastic destruction of artworks. Despite a crucial disagreement with the ethical turn suggested by Lixinski towards subjecting cultural heritage to the premises of transitional justice, the article concludes that the book should be an indispensable read within several fields, due to its normative contribution and the impressive number of case studies exposing cultural heritage through the looking glass of transitional justice in a truly global perspective.