Article
French
ID: <
10.4000/gradhiva.692>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/gradhiva.692>
Abstract
This article takes a look at museums devoted to the history of war and terror in an expanding Europe, and calls their real mission into question. Careful analysis of a number of museum systems casts doubt upon their ability to present a complex history made up of collective and individual decisions, contradictory stances, and discontinuities, favouring instead the memories of a majority seeking general agreement. Minority or dissident experiences, or those that have come to be seen as shameful to the nation concerned, are usually externalised or masked. Each minority memory group should have its own museum, with a discontinuity of places increasing the discontinuity of experiences. Although museums know how to communicate the sense of fear, they no longer question the notion of terror as a political category. Fear is always produced by a negative fury, and no conflict of value seems to explain the violence of any. Far from working on the residual traces of shame, such museums accommodate the past in the form of a generalised pity and long drawn out lamentation.