A Victim's Shoe, a Broken Watch, and Marbles Desire Objects and Human Rights

Muzeológia a kultúrne dedičstvo , 2024

Drawing on scholarship on Holocaust archaeology, object theory and museum studies, this article demonstrates the potency of historical objects as active agents of memory bestowed with a capacity to co-constitute the museum narrative and generate meaning. Using the 2020 exhibit at the museum of the Sobibór death camp as a case study, the article discusses objects on display that once belonged to the Jews deported there in 1942 and 1943. Specifically, the objects in the exhibit are not intended to tell any general story nor to represent the victims symbolically; instead, they communicate individual interests, needs and identities of the deportees. Moreover, these objects, atypical for the setting of a death camp, summon social relations of intimacy with the museum audience.

Museum Anthropology, 2022

This paper examines the role of human remains in genocide memorials and museums to evoke and narrate individual experiences of genocide. Understanding that the display of human remains is contested, I suggest that their presence in memorials and museums can play a valuable, but hitherto neglected, role in the development of individualized and evidentiary narratives of genocide. Such narratives, developed through explicit information regarding the provenance of the remains and the forensic analysis conducted, can deepen the engagement with and understanding of the victims of genocide by museum visitors. Based on the Forensics Exhibition in Tuol Sleng, Cambodia, I argue that explicitly displaying and explicating the remains develops a powerful evidentiary narrative complementing those developed in more familiar exhibitions. In so doing, I expand on debates regarding the liminal position of human remains as person and object, arguing that the display of such remains in a forensic and public context supports engagement with the remains as individuals. In so doing, the paper provides an opportunity to consider the management of the dead and human remains in the aftermath of mass violence and genocide, attempting to marry the emotional and social needs of the survivors with the desire for “evidence” articulated in the legal, historical, and pedagogical realms.

Memory Studies, 2017

When private grief is brought into the memorial museum, this transfer is a deliberate act that is seeking public acknowledgement and action. By considering the life history of a collection of objects now in the Museum of Free Derry (Northern Ireland), the use of objects in private mourning and as agents in the collective processes of public remembering is demonstrated. The story is one of loss and mourning that is intensified by the political context of the deaths. As cherished possessions, these objects are active in the private processes of grieving and recovery. In the memorial museum, they are agents in an evolving justice campaign, embedded in the political negotiations of the region.

Kronos: Southern African Histories, 2018

2017

Simon Wiesenthal Conference: (In)Glorious Victims? Challenging the Paradigms of Memory Politics in Europe. Nov. 2017.

In his lectures on the nature of love, power and justice, Paul Tillich (1954, 101) contends that the ideas and symbols (story) of a group"s identity are forms of power with ethical implications. After conflict, thus, broken societies face ethical questions about whose story will be told, what should be remembered, whose voices should be heard or suppressed. As curated memory keepers of a nation"s identity, values and power struggles, museums and memorials confront these questions and the related ethical considerations constraining commemoration. This essay draws theoretical assumptions from rhetorical and narrative theory and memory studies to explore two case studies that highlight ethical issues in commemoration: the creation of memorials representing Japanese American internment during World War II and post-Apartheid efforts in South Africa to reclaim a subjugated history through a series of state-sponsored memory sites.

2018

Human Remains and Violence, 2020

The display of human remains is a controversial issue in many contemporary societies, with many museums globally removing them from display. However, their place in genocide memorials is also contested. Objections towards the display of remains are based strongly in the social sciences and humanities, predicated on assumptions made regarding the relationship between respect, identification and personhood. As remains are displayed scientifically and anonymously, it is often argued that the personhood of the remains is denied, thereby rendering the person ‘within’ the remains invisible. In this article I argue that the link between identification and personhood is, in some contexts, tenuous at best. Further, in the context of Cambodia, I suggest that such analyses ignore the ways that local communities and Cambodians choose to interact with human remains in their memorials. In such contexts, the display of the remains is central to restoring their personhood and dignity.

seem to be three types of memorial objects: those that belonged to victims or the event such as clothing, furniture or actual fragments like teeth; those that stand in for the victims as symbols, such as photos, buttons, paperclips or grave markers; and lastly those that acted upon the victims, like planes, guns, train cars or prison camps. These artifacts are significant because they can be perceived to stand in for the missing person much like a portrait does. In this way objects can be very divisive because they are part of the ritual of remembering and therefore sacred or profane depending on the viewer. Carol Duncan wrote that visiting a museum is a sort of ritual: " museums resemble older ritual sites..because they are structured to accommodate and prompt ritual activity…like most ritual sites, museum space is carefully marked off and culturally designated as reserved for a special kind of attention-in this case contemplation and learning… " If we look at the 1 narratives told by the institution as a sort of guide in this ritual, it changes how the objects can be perceived. In the case of memorial museums, it is a ritual of remembering of a traumatic event,

Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored, 2020

At the National September 11 Memorial Museum, the material culture of everyday life infuses the heart of a story in which ordinary people, on an otherwise unexceptional workday, were thrust into the vortex of a global event. Within the Museum, objects serve as proxies for the thousands of individuals that confronted drastic choices. Personal possessions recovered in the wreckage and objects that speak to a victim’s life, are especially poignant when their meaning is explained by loved ones. This chapter explores the complex issues of curatorial practice, collection building and memorialization of shared traumatic experience. It also addresses some of the digital culture related to 9/11, and how the unification of the material and digital and use of technology in the museum space, offer unique opportunities for storytelling, and memorialization of victims of mass violence. Although the National September 11 Memorial Museum chronicles an event of continuing global consequence, this chapter seeks to emphasize the importance of gathering evidence of the human impact of any disruptive contemporaneous event that is emotionally sensitive, politically charged and historically unsettled.