Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GMM (Globalized Memorial Museums.Exhibiting Atrocities in the Era of Claims for Moral Universals)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-03-01 al 2022-08-31
The ‘universalization of the Holocaust’ has established the Holocaust as a historical reference point legitimizing a global moral imperative to respect human rights. Much has been written about the ostensible ‘globalization of memory’, but as of yet no genuinely global comparative study systematically confronting this hypothesis with the actual representations of atrocities exists. The “Globalized Memorial Museums” (GMM) project 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, while GMM also critically examines the price of the attendant de-contextualization in the name of moral universals. GMM’s global typology of memorial museums critically examines the concept of ‘universal memory’ and the notion that memorial museums constitute a globalized space of communication and negotiation. Against the backdrop of the current resurgence of nationalism and authoritarianism, the European Union’s identity crisis and the rise of non-democratic powers like Russia and China GMM serves the urgent need to scrutinize the benefits and risks involved in the ostensible ‘globalization of memory’.
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, while GMM also critically examines the price of the attendant de-contextualization in the name of moral universals. GMM’s global typology of memorial museums critically examines the concept of ‘universal memory’ and the notion that memorial museums constitute a globalized space of communication and negotiation. Against the backdrop of the current resurgence of nationalism and authoritarianism, the European Union’s identity crisis and the rise of non-democratic powers like Russia and China GMM serves the urgent need to scrutinize the benefits and risks involved in the ostensible ‘globalization of memory’.
We have organized two workshops and a public event aimed at reexamining our objectives, with the help of renowned advisory board members Aleida Assmann (Konstanz University), Omer Bartov (Brown University), Kirk Denton (Ohio State University), Carol Gluck (Columbia University), Rachel Ibreck (University of London) and David Mwambari (King’s College London/Ghent University). After an international call for applications, two PhD students were selected, tasked with analyzing, respectively, Chinese and Rwandan museums. The PhD students are co-supervised by the team members and the two regional experts from the advisory board. Both PhD students successfully presented their projects at the compulsory faculty presentation at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Vienna University.
The interdisciplinary team comprises international members from Rwanda; Czech Republic/China; Germany/Switzerland/Japan; Poland/Germany/Netherlands; Croatia/Austria; and Germany/Austria). We established a shared theoretical and methodological framework to be applied in the analysis of the chosen museums. This included revisiting and reworking existing approaches in memory studies, museum studies, cultural studies, dead body studies, and regional studies applicable to the analysis of globalized memorial museums, and developing our own innovative methodology (see next section).
Despite the pandemic, the GMM team visited and documented almost all of the 50 museums covered in the project. This was done either in the application phase or during the project runtime. Team members also visited and documented other museums important for a thorough contextualization of the museum landscape, like the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo or the former clandestine detention center ESMA in Buenos Aires. Regarding the forensic part of our project, we conducted participatory observation of forensic excavations of human remains at the former labor camp in Treblinka, Poland, and of the archaeological search for the mass grave of 200 Jews murdered in 1945 in the Austrian town of Rechnitz.
We have presented our results in 69 public lectures so far and published one monograph, one co-edited special issue, 18 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Our publications so far have dealt with theoretical innovations, museums in Central and South Eastern Europe (and their role models) and the comparison between Japanese and German museums.
The interdisciplinary team comprises international members from Rwanda; Czech Republic/China; Germany/Switzerland/Japan; Poland/Germany/Netherlands; Croatia/Austria; and Germany/Austria). We established a shared theoretical and methodological framework to be applied in the analysis of the chosen museums. This included revisiting and reworking existing approaches in memory studies, museum studies, cultural studies, dead body studies, and regional studies applicable to the analysis of globalized memorial museums, and developing our own innovative methodology (see next section).
Despite the pandemic, the GMM team visited and documented almost all of the 50 museums covered in the project. This was done either in the application phase or during the project runtime. Team members also visited and documented other museums important for a thorough contextualization of the museum landscape, like the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo or the former clandestine detention center ESMA in Buenos Aires. Regarding the forensic part of our project, we conducted participatory observation of forensic excavations of human remains at the former labor camp in Treblinka, Poland, and of the archaeological search for the mass grave of 200 Jews murdered in 1945 in the Austrian town of Rechnitz.
We have presented our results in 69 public lectures so far and published one monograph, one co-edited special issue, 18 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Our publications so far have dealt with theoretical innovations, museums in Central and South Eastern Europe (and their role models) and the comparison between Japanese and German museums.
A key output is the methodological dossier developed by the team: a set of theoretically informed questions for the analysis of each museum. This allows for a systematic comparison and serves to fully consider national and regional specificities. The international team contributed to the dossier perspectives that challenge the Western-dominated and Eurocentric memory debates.
The dossier starts with questions regarding the history and role of the museum in the respective society, and its material structure. It also comprises all our innovative methodological knowledge: a novel categorization of museum objects, of photographs on display, and of voids/gaps in museums – informed by extensive readings and analysis of materials collected at the 50 museums. For instance, based on in-depth analysis of human remains on display in museums and material practices around them, the project captures the specificity of things suspended between human remains and material objects, such as prosthesis, which we frame as ‘atopic objects’. Furthermore, the investigation of museal strategies of exhibiting human remains in museums and at memorial sites, itself beyond the state of the art due to its comparative scale and scope, expanded beyond museums traditionally analyzed in this context (for instance, Rwanda) to include museums in China and Japan, where such investigation has not been performed thus far. This constitutes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the field of museum studies but also material culture studies and dead body studies.
Another categorization developed in the project pertains to missing, silenced or excluded topics, whose absence needs to be addressed with sensitivity to political, religious, and cultural realities foundational for each museum. We looked, in this context, at politics of marginalization, othering, silencing, taboos, conspiracies of silence/noise, epistemic violence, absenting, and others, as articulated in the museums.
Our comparative results show, among other aspects, that most museums today include individual proponents’ private photographs, biographies, biographical objects or testimonies – a trend that can be observed almost everywhere and is “downloaded” and appropriated for the respective national purpose in very different ways.
In the remaining time, we will finish our analysis of the 50 museums and the global comparative study, which systematically confronts the “globalization of memory” paradigm with the actual representations of atrocities.
The dossier starts with questions regarding the history and role of the museum in the respective society, and its material structure. It also comprises all our innovative methodological knowledge: a novel categorization of museum objects, of photographs on display, and of voids/gaps in museums – informed by extensive readings and analysis of materials collected at the 50 museums. For instance, based on in-depth analysis of human remains on display in museums and material practices around them, the project captures the specificity of things suspended between human remains and material objects, such as prosthesis, which we frame as ‘atopic objects’. Furthermore, the investigation of museal strategies of exhibiting human remains in museums and at memorial sites, itself beyond the state of the art due to its comparative scale and scope, expanded beyond museums traditionally analyzed in this context (for instance, Rwanda) to include museums in China and Japan, where such investigation has not been performed thus far. This constitutes a groundbreaking contribution not only to the field of museum studies but also material culture studies and dead body studies.
Another categorization developed in the project pertains to missing, silenced or excluded topics, whose absence needs to be addressed with sensitivity to political, religious, and cultural realities foundational for each museum. We looked, in this context, at politics of marginalization, othering, silencing, taboos, conspiracies of silence/noise, epistemic violence, absenting, and others, as articulated in the museums.
Our comparative results show, among other aspects, that most museums today include individual proponents’ private photographs, biographies, biographical objects or testimonies – a trend that can be observed almost everywhere and is “downloaded” and appropriated for the respective national purpose in very different ways.
In the remaining time, we will finish our analysis of the 50 museums and the global comparative study, which systematically confronts the “globalization of memory” paradigm with the actual representations of atrocities.