Description du projet
Holocauste et génocide – représentations des atrocités
L’hypothèse de la «mondialisation de la mémoire» et le fait que l’Holocauste soit devenu une référence historique mondiale pour les droits de l’homme n’ont jamais fait l’objet d’une analyse systématique. Le projet GMM, financé par l’UE, vérifie cette hypothèse en examinant 50 musées commémoratifs situés sur quatre continents, en s’intéressant tout particulièrement à la période de la Seconde Guerre mondiale aux États-Unis, en Israël, en Europe, en Chine et au Japon et aux récents génocides perpétrés au Rwanda et en ex-Yougoslavie. Le projet passe en revue plusieurs tendances contradictoires à cet égard. Le musée des États-Unis du mémorial de l’Holocauste et Yad Vashem sont des modèles souvent cités en exemple en ce qui concerne l’exposition de victimes individuelles, le concept allemand de la mémoire négative eu égard à la complicité individuelle est rarement copié, alors que les génocides commis dans les années 1990 ont jeté un nouveau regard sur les fouilles médico-légales.
Objectif
The ‘universalization of the Holocaust’ has established the Shoah as an historical reference point legitimizing a global moral imperative to respect human rights. Much has been written about the ostensible ‘globalization of memory’, but as yet no genuinely global comparative study systematically confronting this hypothesis with the actual representations of atrocities exists. GMM breaks new ground by examining memorial museums on four continents, arguing that what is called ‘globalization’ in fact comprises three to some degree contradictory trends:
1) The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem are role models for a universal moral orientation that focuses on the individual victim and generates aesthetic ‘standards’ for musealization.
2) The German concept of negative memory, self-critically confronting the crimes committed by her own population, has inspired museums to tackle the question of one’s own complicity in order to challenge collective self-victimization and the externalization of responsibility.
3) The genocides of the 1990s led to a ‘forensic turn’: the investigation of bones & other material evidence of atrocities has changed the way in situ memorial museums deal with material traces of violence. This shift has also impacted ‘old’ memorial sites like Sobibor, which has become a site of archaeological research after 70 years.
GMM examines 50 memorial museums dealing with
- the WWII period in the US, Israel, Europe, China, and Japan;
- recent genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Scholars claim that ‘globalized’ memorial museums reflect new moral standards and a new language of commemoration, but what is the price of the attendant de-contextualization in the name of moral universals? GMM’s wholly original global typology of memorial museums has the potential to act as a genuine game changer that challenges the concept of ‘universal memory’ and the notion that memorial museums constitute a globalized space of communication and negotiation.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
1010 Wien
Autriche