Post-communist invocation of Europe: memorial museums' narratives and the Europeanization of memory

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić
Keyword(s):  
Memorial Museums

scholarly journals The power of place: Trauma recovery and memorialization

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Arel
Keyword(s):  
Life Events ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotional Availability ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Potential Space ◽  
Trauma Recovery ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Memorial Museums

In this paper, places of trauma, physical locations that reflect the Celtic spiritual concept of “thin places,” simultaneously represent real life events, possess symbolic meaning, and become places for active, engaged social activity related to memorialization. I explore how these places create a potential space for working through trauma, drawing on Judith Herman’s fundamental stages of recovery which she articulates as “establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their communities.” I argue that memorial museums attending to trauma can guide the process of working through suffering to growth and transformation, thus benefiting witnesses, survivors and family members, and employees who immerse themselves in the stories they memorialize in order to facilitate empathy and emotional availability to visitors of all types. This community commemorating communal

Skabelsen af fortiden i Kigali Genocide Memorial Center

2018 ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Amy Sodaro
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Rwandan Genocide ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Memorial Museums ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Form ◽  
The Creation

Emerging from the extremely violent 20th century, memorial museums are a new form of commemoration, created to both commemorate and educate about past genocide, human rights abuses and other injustices with the goal of instilling in their visitors an ethic of “never again.” However, these ambitious goals are often compromised by the politics behind the creation of memorial museums. The focus of this paper is on the ways in which memorial museums produce history according to the dictates, needs and desires of the regimes that build them, using the example of the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Rwanda. Despite the fact that the Kigali Center commemorates the 1994 Rwandan genocide using the increasingly familiar, global memorial museum form, it reveals much more about current Rwandan politics and the government’s hopes for the future of Rwanda than it does confront the terrible past.

Prosthetic trauma and politics in the National September 11 Memorial Museum

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129
Author(s):  
Amy Sodaro
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Memorial Museums ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Good And Evil

The National September 11 Memorial Museum opened in New York City in May 2014. Like other memorial museums, it uses affect and experience to produce in visitors what Alison Landsberg calls a “prosthetic memory” of 9/11: an individual, personal memory of 9/11 whether or not the visitor actually experienced the event. However, the museum also constructs 9/11 as an event that is collectively, culturally traumatic. Thus, the prosthetic memory might be better conceived as a “prosthetic trauma” that, in recreating for visitors the trauma of 9/11, encourages strong identification with the victims as embodiments of the American cultural identity that was targeted by the ideology of the terrorists. In this article, I examine how the 9/11 Museum constructs 9/11 as cultural trauma and uses the act of bearing witness to create “prosthetic trauma” and a simplistic dualism between good and evil that has important political implications.

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