ISBN:
9780231177580
Language:
English
Pages:
XVI, 250 Seiten
,
Illustrationen
DDC:
305.896/073
Keywords:
African Americans Historiography
;
Blacks Historiography
;
Racism Historiography
;
Racism Historiography
;
Historical museums
;
Historical museums
;
Memory Social aspects
;
Memory Social aspects
;
United States Race relations
;
Historiography
;
South Africa Race relations
;
Historiography
;
Museum
;
USA
;
Südafrika
;
Historisches Museum
;
Gedächtnis
Abstract:
"A sociological comparison of how South Africa and the United States engage and struggle with the institutionalized racism of their respective pasts through the lens of the development of history museums in both countries"--Provided by publisher
Abstract:
Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Museums Visited -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: Desegregating the Past -- 1. Memory Entrepreneurs: History in the Making -- 2. The Curated Past: Remembering the Collective -- 3. Managing Collective Representations -- 4. Memory Deviants: Breaking the Collective -- Conclusion: Museumification of Memory -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index
Note:
At the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, visitors confront the past upon arrival. They must decide whether to enter the museum through a door marked whites" or another marked non-whites." Inside, along with text, they encounter hanging nooses and other reminders of apartheid-era atrocities. In the United States, museum exhibitions about racial violence and segregation are mostly confined to black history museums, with national history museums sidelining such difficult material. Even the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is dedicated not to violent histories of racial domination but to a more generalized narrative about black identity and culture. The scale at which violent racial pasts have been incorporated into South African national historical narratives is lacking in the U.S. Desegregating the Past considers why this is the case, tracking the production and display of historical representations of racial pasts at museums in both countries and what it reveals about underlying social anxieties, unsettled emotions, and aspirations surrounding contemporary social fault lines around race. Robyn Autry consults museum archives, conducts interviews with staff, and recounts the public and private battles fought over the creation and content of history museums. Despite vast differences in the development of South African and U.S. society, Autry finds a common set of ideological, political, economic, and institutional dilemmas arising out of the selective reconstruction of the past. Museums have played a major role in shaping public memory, at times recognizing and at other times blurring the ongoing influence of historical crimes. The narratives museums produce to engage with difficult, violent histories expose present anxieties concerning identity, (mis)recognition, and ongoing conflict
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