Communicating Conflicting Histories

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2016Author
Babic, Darko
Mikloševi, Željka
Suggested citation
Babic, Darko;
Mikloševi, Željka;
.
(2016)
.
Communicating Conflicting Histories.
Her&Mus. Heritage and Museography, 2016, núm. 17, p. 177-188.
http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/65532.
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Show full item recordAbstract
Once modernist approach to history
started to be contested, primarily by historians
themselves, an opportunity arose for museum
communication of prismatic, multi-perspective
narratives which form a close relationship to people
and, moreover, come from people. Communicative
memory started to be presented in museums
together with “objective” cultural memory. However,
juxtapositions of communicative and cultural
memory inevitably give birth to oppositions,
especially in the case of traumatic experiences such
as those resulting from war. The aim of the paper is
to analyse the ways in which material culture and
memorial sites can trigger contradictory memories
and a range of different feelings, and to investigate
institutional communication of shared and contested
historical narratives in Croatia. The theoretical
explication is followed by example thematically
related to cultural and communicative memory of
the Second World War in Croatia, more precise the
Jasenovac Memorial Site/Museum (ex-concentration
camp) and changes it witnessed over a half of
century due to different political or museological
perspectives. The paper also explores, on the one
hand, the degree to which communicative memory
can be subjected to institutionalization and on
the other hand a possibility of making museums
and heritage sites polemic platforms which could
contribute to reconciliation and recognition of
differences.