Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places(Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)

Much of the literature on post-violent contexts addresses problems of transitional justice, memory studies, and post-conflict reconciliation. This volume inscribes an innovative domain of inquiry, situating itself creatively amidst these discussions but building upon the literatures of museum and heritage studies. The contributors (themselves practitioners, artists, curators, activists and academics) draw from a broad range of geographical and theoretical material, and explore new ways of bearing witness vis-a-vis curatorial practice, heritage work and memorializing the past, to examine the challenges and limitations of such endeavors.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations List of Maps Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Witnesses to Witnessing; E.Lehrer & C.E.Milton PART I: BEARING WITNESS BETWEEN MUSEUMS AND COMMUNITIES 'We were so far away': Exhibiting Inuit Oral Histories of Residential Schools; H.Igloliorte The Past is a Dangerous Place: the Museum as a Safe Haven; V.Szekeres Teaching Tolerance through Objects of Hatred: The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia as 'Counter-Museum'; M.E.Patterson Politics of the Past: Remembering the Rwandan Genocide at the Kigali Memorial Center; A.Sodaro PART II: VISUALIZING THE PAST Living Historically through Photographs in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reflections on Kliptown Museum, Soweto; D.Newbury Showing and Telling: Photography Exhibitions in Israeli Discourses of Dissent; T.Katriel Visualizing Apartheid: Re-framing Truth and Reconciliation through Contemporary South African Art; E.Mosely PART III: MATERIALITY AND MEMORIAL CHALLENGES Points of No Return: Cultural Heritage and Counter-Memory in Post-Yugoslavia; A.Herscher Defacing Memory: (Un)tying Peru's Memory Knots; C.E.Milton (Mis)representations of the Jewish Past in Poland's Memoryscapes: Nationalism, Religion and Political Economies of Commemoration; S.Kapralski Afterward: The Turn to Pedagogy: a Needed Conversation on the Practice of Curating Difficult Knowledge; R.I.Simon Index

About the Author :
ERICA LEHRER is Assistant Professor in History and Anthropology-Sociology at Concordia University in Montreal, where she also holds the Canada Research chair in Post-Conflict Studies. She is author of Revisiting Jewish Poland: Heritage, Memory, Reconciliation (2012), and has undertaken experimental curatorial work on Jewish heritage and memory in contemporary Poland. CYNTHIA E. MILTONis Canada Research Chair in Latin American History and Associate Professor in the Departement d'histoire at the Universite de Montreal, Canada. She is author of The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador (2007), editor of The Arts of Truth-telling in Post-Shining Path Peru, and co-editor of The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule (2005). MONICA EILEEN PATTERSON is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She is the author of numerous publications, and co-editor of Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline (2011).

Review :
'How to put difficult knowledge on public display is one of the biggest challenges for curators. It is also of major importance in contemporary civic life: what should be said and shown in museums, and how? This raises fascinating and complex intellectual and political questions. This book exposes and tackles these brilliantly through excellent discussion of a wide range of provocative cases. It should be read by anybody concerned with the dilemmas of curating difficult knowledge.' - Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK