Post-Conflict Commemoration: Ethical Constraints in Museums & Memorials

Post-Conflict Commemoration:Ethical Constraints in Museums &

MemorialsCatherine Ann Collins, Professor, Department of Rhetoric,

Willamette University, [email protected] Anderson, PhD student, American Studies, Brown

University,[email protected]

AbstractIn 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 beremembered, 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 WorldWar II and post-Apartheid efforts in South Africa to reclaim a subjugated history through a series of state-sponsored memory sites.

We pose a series of questions as we assess the verbal, visual, and spatial rhetoric of memorials to Japanese American exclusionand patriotism during WWII and museums in South Africa that recount a history of suppression and control of Black South Africans by the white minority. At issue is the retelling of a subjugated history. Telling the story of conflict is always complex, opening emotionally charged and conflicting, conversations. Pursuing a single history, what becomes repressed

in official memory sites? In giving voice to previously silencedpeople, how does one resist simply silencing the original narrative? How does the convenient characterization of heroism, victimage and villainy complicate the pursuit of human well-being? How might narratives hinder reconciliation? Is it ever legitimate to forget? Is the achievement of narrative complexityan ethical necessity? This paper explores the ethical issues that arise when attempting to tell a balanced history, and the complications of memorialization in a society where both oppressors and the oppressed still coexist.

Post-Conflict Commemoration: Ethical Constraints in Museums &Memorials

Conflict Stories

From the President’s announcement that Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese planes on December 7, 1941 through the authorization to relocate and intern over 110,000 individuals ofJapanese heritage (thirty thousand of whom were children), through the decisions to drop atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese American conflict during WWII was cast asa contest between good and evil. Questions about the abuse of power, the abridgement of the Bill of Rights, and the justness of political acts against Japan and Japanese Americans were

suppressed. In an oral history Gordon Hirabayashi notes, “No onemade any effort to find out if the people they were locking up were loyal American citizens. If you had Japanese ancestry and lived on the West Coast, that was enough. You were sent to one of the camps” (Sherman & Katagiri, 1994, p. 50). Ten relocation camps with primitive cooking and plumbing were established: the average stay in these camps was 3 ½ years.

Not until 1980 did a commission appointed by President Jimmy Carter determine that the decision to evacuate, relocate and intern Japanese Americans was not warranted. It took an additional 8 years for Congress and President Reagan to pass andsign into law legislation to apologize for the internment. Telling the story of conflict is always complex, opening emotionally charged and conflicting conversations. An internee from the Tule Lake camp writes, “What we have to say should be listened to. It is the gap between the promise of America and its fulfillment: the fulfillment is non-existent, like the ear you give us” (Sherman & Katagiri, 1994, p. 64). In response to suppression, memorials like those established in Portland, Oregon and Bainbridge Island, Washington attempt to give voice to those interned in the United States during WWII.

Giving a voice to those formally considered second-class citizens is also a concern in South Africa, whose infamous apartheid regime was formally disbanded in 1994 when free elections were held for the first time in the country’s history and a black leader was elected to rule over a country with a black majority. Laying the groundwork for the transition from the 46-year rule of the National Party to democracy was a long and tumultuous task, as well as one which produced its own set of heroes and leaders. Even before one empire crumbled another was being built. In 1990, the newly elected F.W. de Klerk – the last elected representative of the Afrikaner National Party – made one of his first acts as State President to unban the

political parties which opposed the NP, including the widely popular African National Congress (ANC). With Mandela at its stern, the party was pulled out of hiding and became highly organized, holding its 48th National Conference in July 1991 – the first legal meeting since 1959 ("47th national conference," 2010). Before even finalizing its policy on Health Education or Social Welfare, the ANC established "The Commission on Museums, Monuments, and Heraldry" (CMMH), as a “think-tank…to examine museum legislature and policy set up by the previous (National Party) government" (Coombes, 2003, p. 15).

Renamed the Commission for Reconstruction and Transformation in the Arts and Culture (CREATE) in 1993, the first major act of the Commission was the scrutiny of an inter-museum project nicknamed MUSA, whose job it was to "try to reconcile the views of a museum sector rooted in the colonial and apartheid past with. . .impending democratic state structures" (Coombes, 2003, p. 15). The ANC claimed the report "[did] not even get off the starting blocks" (Coombes, 2003, p. 15). Although the ANC did not itself provide a plan for rectifying the vision of the old museums with the new, it did remain a vocal and influential force in the development of post-apartheidmuseums. For the first time, black South Africans were able to see their voices represented in a state-sanctioned, “official” way, and the temptation to erase the voices of those who had forso long oppressed them was certainly palpable. Yet the country’snew constitution explicitly demanded that its inhabitants “believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.” How, then, were the museums to balance the old with the new, telling the stories so long repressed without silencing the voices of others who also shaped the past?

In beginning this essay with two conflict stories, both of which call for formerly silenced people to tell their story of suppression, we intentionally pose a question of

ethics: After conflict, what story will broken societies tell asthe official memory of the past, what should be remembered, and whose voices should be heard? We begin with a brief discussion of the relationship between a community’s narratives and social ethics. This is followed by a discussion of how museums and memorials serve as curated memory keepers of a nation’s identity, values and power struggles. We offer two case studies that highlight ethical issues in commemoration: the creation of memorials representing Japanese American internment during WorldWar II and efforts in post-Apartheid South Africa to reclaim a subjugated history through a series of state-sponsored memory sites. In both cases we might well ask, Why is it necessary to retell history? Why do we need a physical reminder of a dark period in our past? One answer was provided by the Honorable Justice W. Michael Gillette speaking at the dedication ceremony August 3, 1990, of the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon:

without a memorial, without a physical gesture of remembrance, we can, we may, we will forget. Already the Japanese internment experience is hardly noted incivics textbooks and in history textbooks. It is barely a footnote in college history courses, and even worse it is not mentioned at all in most law schools. Yet this story, the story that is represented by the memorial we dedicate today, must not, and cannot, be lost. (Sherman & Katagiri, 1994, p.

This paper explores the ethical issues that arise when attempting to tell a balanced history, and the complications of memorialization in a society where both oppressors and the oppressed still coexist.

Community Narratives and Social Ethics

In his lectures on the nature of love, power and justice, Paul Tillich argues that “power is never only physical force, but it is also the power of symbols and ideas in which the life of a social group expresses itself” (1954, p. 101). These ideas and symbols are articulated as narratives that reflect the group’s identity. A group might tell its story as one of an heroic people caught in a struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil in which strangers – outsiders tothe group – ought not be trusted. In a very different story theymight characterize themselves as victims of evil, willing to embrace strangers whose ideas and skills might help them fight against such forces. The story one tells, in the characterizations drawn, conventional plotlines reiterated from situation to situation, and predictable identification of valuesand implicit motives, calls forth a program of action, a way of willing one’s power in the world. Rhetorician Kenneth Burke explains the relationship between the symbols chosen to express one’s story and the kind of action that choice compels. He explains that

speech in its essence is not neutral. . .It is intensely moral – its names for objects contain the emotional overtones which give us the cues as to howwe should act toward those objects. . . .speech is not a naming at all, but a system of attitudes, of implicit exhortations. To call a man a friend or an enemy is per se to suggest a program of action with regard to him. (Burke, 1965, pp. 176-177)

The choice of story that is told and the specific symbols employed in that storytelling have ethical implications. In naming oneself or others one justifies compulsive power. In referencing a particular set of past experiences one creates precedents for political action. In naming oneself in association with a set of values and naming the other as holding

contrary values, one’s narrative engenders conflict and permits actions that in another context would be deemed inappropriate orunethical. Stanley Hauerwas thus concludes: “The form and substance of a community is narrative dependent and therefore what counts as ‘social ethics’ is a correlative of the content of that narrative” (1983, p. 10).

Museums and Memorials as Memory Keepers

All museums and memorials are a product of curation, of conscious decisions made about what to put in and what to leave out. Indeed, the concept of a national historical narrative is itself defined as much by what is told, as by the deafening silences that mark moments of controversy or shame. The way in which these sites discuss the past often relies heavily on the memories of individuals, claiming their first-hand accounts of “what happened” as a primary source of information. In this way the museums and memorials serve not just as keepers of memory, but to reify certain perspectives as “truth.”

This becomes problematic, however, when we realize that memories told through these sites do not merely inform us of the past, but also undoubtedly shape the future. A knowledge of one's past means not merely knowing what was, but having an understanding of how one ought to be as a result – it is integral to shaping understanding of oneself and one's world as well. Stuart Hall argues, “identities [personal or collective] are thenames we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves in, the narratives of the past” (2006, p. 234). The narratives told at the museums and memorials are a wayfor visitors to understand their own past as a part of who they are today. Identities are inseparable from histories because they are so tightly interlaced with each other.

This is made even more problematic by the fact that assites of memory, museums and monuments are not neutral vehicles

for storytelling, but are inherently ideologically charged. Theyare part of what Althusser calls “the Ideological State Apparatus,” sites and institutions which function as a unit of control not by violence but through ideology, establishing how the story of the past can or cannot be told (2006, p. 88). Although not as tangible as the related Repressive State Apparatus, by making decisions about whose voice can be heard museums and memorials validate certain viewpoints over others – whether it is of reconciliation or of repression – creating the illusion of a unified narrative of the past that becomes instrumental in creating citizens’ understandings of themselves today. There is an inherent power in being able to control the contents of these sites, one whose implications spread far beyond the museum or memorial itself.

Memorials to Japanese-American Internment During WWII

Two memorials provide examples of commemorations of the Japanese American internment during WWII. The oldest memorial in the United States to commemorate the internment, theJapanese American Historical Plaza, located in Portland, Oregon,was funded by the Oregon Nikkei Endowment. It was completed two years after the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that apologized for the injustice of the relocation and internment of more than 120,000. The memorial is a garden of carved boulders, copper columns, grass and cherry trees. The granite and basalt stones and bronze plaques include a copy of the Bill of Rights (Image 1) at one end, and the official Congressional and Presidential apologies at the other (Images 2 and 3).

Image 1: Japanese American Historical Plaza, Portland, Oregon,August 12, 2013.

Image courtesy of Catherine Ann Collins.



The names of the 10 internment camps are carved into one boulder. Other stones feature poems about the experiences faced by Oregon’s evacuees.

In form, the plaza is much like other Pacific Northwest warmemorials. The use of stones carved with names of honorees, testimonials, or places of major battles give an organic feel tothe site of commemoration and identify key elements in the storybeing retold. The messages carved into the stones and the symbolic objects, images, and documents that are chosen for display combine to create a story about the past that invokes respect for those who were affected in the past, but also urges the visitor to prevent such tragic acts in the future. The inclusion of the United States Bill of Rights at the entrance structures the plaza as a narrative of tragedy – a failure on

America’s part to live up to its ideals and laws making personalfreedom a fundamental concern. This is reinforced on the plaque where President Reagan apologizes and labels the evacuation and internment a “sad chapter in our history” that “teaches an invaluable lesson: that our Constitution is based on a belief inthe innate, God-given worth of every individual, and that this worth cannot be denied without diminishing and endangering us all.” The reminder of American rights and the formal apologies alone complete the argument of this retelling of the U.S. history of World War II.

To supplement the primary argument, the memorial humanizesthe victims of internment. Some of the stones capture the experience of those interned, both expressing the fear of leaving and returning (Image 4) and the declaration that Japanese Americans were citizens just like the white Oregonians who remained in Portland throughout the war. (Image 5) The experiences carved into the stones rename the interned as being like white Americans rather than as Others to be feared. Villainy is neither assigned nor forgiven; it remains implicit in the violation of fundamental tenets of human rights.



Several stones and the copper pillars emphasize the dedication of Japanese Americans who entered military service to prove their loyalty to the United States. Fundamentally, the story becomes a supplementary history of World War II without polarizing Japanese Americans and white Americans. The experiences, apologies, and identification of internment camps serve as evidence to events that that earlier histories did not include, but the message does not emphasize the racism behind the decision to intern citizens of Japanese heritage. Implicit claims of injustice rely on violations of then existing laws andcultural values. In Tillich’s terms, justice is served if the viewer listens to the narrative of those who were wrongfully

interned: “They want us to listen, they want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being” (1954, p. 84).

The second memorial is the Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial (BIJAEMA), located in Washington and supported by a non-profit organization, it commemorates the first group of Japanese Americans to be evacuated and relocated for the duration of the war. The memorial takes the form of a 276 foot-long cedar, granite and basalt contemplative wall that lists the names of families deported from the island. Its motto is Nidoto Nai Yoni, Let It Not Happen Again. The website explains the purpose of the memorial: “The memorial will commemorate and honor the strength and perseverance of the people involved – both those exiled and their island neighbors –and brings awareness of the powerful capacity of human beings and a nation to heal, forgive and care for one another” (http://www.bijac.org/index.php?p=MEMORIALOriginMessage).

A kiosk located between the car park and the entrance to the memorial wall displays signboards with factual information, historic photographs, and testimonies of the Bainbridge Islanders. The story that is offered on these storyboards is oneof confusion, fear, and hardship for those of Japanese heritage who were given a week to pack what they could carry and wear. One young mother said, “I was scared. I was confused. Where are they taking me? How long will we be gone? How will I protect my kids?” But there are other stories as well that suggest an empathy toward the Japanese on Bainbridge Island. One recent high school graduate told his employer, “I’m going to take time off. You can dock me whatever you want, but I’m going to see my Japanese friends off.” Other stories of white gouging, however, are also told, but with less frequency than the stories of inter-racial support and kindness. The kiosk storyboards set thetone for reading the memorial wall. Japanese and American islanders are characterized as a community. It is outsiders and

governmental decisions that are seen as excluding Japanese Americans. Without denying or minimizing the injustices that occurred, the story at the Bainbridge Island memorial exhibits what Tillich terms creative justice. He defines love as the impulse to reunite what is separated, and argues that “love is the ultimate principle of justice. Love reunites; justice preserves what is to be reunited. . . .creative justice is the form of reuniting love” (Tillich, 1954, p. 71). The narrative fights the natural inclination to polarize, in this case the white community and the community of Japanese heritage. Instead the focus on community, on identification of commonalities, especially shared values and shared farming experiences that unite rather than divide those living on the island in the 1940s.

Kenneth Burke argues that communication offers two fundamentallydifferent options, it can build identification in which shared properties are emphasized to create a common experience and foster community – “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. . .and in acting together, men have common sensations, concepts, images, ideas. Attitudes that make them consubstantial” (1969, pp. 20-21) – or one can choose to focus on division, the things that separate us. The terracotta plaqueson the memorial wall articulate the consubstantiality between both races on the island. The first plaque focuses on the commonality of farming (See Image 6).

Image 6: Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial,August 31, 2013.


The second panel makes clear the shared American experience – baseball – that high school children shared. (See Image 7) Notice the emphasis on his being a 100% American citizen. Between these first two plaques are the names, grouped by families, of the evacuees. Strings of paper cranes hang from thewooden panels.

Image 7: Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, August31, 2013.


While finding commonalities, the plaques also make clear the horror of the experience for both children and adults who were disposed by Executive Order 9066. The third plaque shows a mother and daughter wearing identification tags that evoke our collective memory of German concentration camp prisoners. The fourth plague frames the terracotta image with wood and barbed wire that surrounded the internment camps. Interestingly, the right hand quotation in Image 8 reinforces the communal story asit notes the symbolic commemoration at Bainbridge High School’s graduation ceremonies.

Image 8: Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial,August 31, 2013.


Only one of the terracotta plaques shows a lack of community. The final terracotta plaque is paired with another plaque that tells the story of a farm that was cared for and returned to theJapanese American family upon their return. But the last image reminds the viewer that no community is perfect, and that is part of the message we are not to forget, and not to let happen again. (See Image 9) A young woman says, “My father and his brother worked so hard to build up Bainbridge Gardens. When we returned there was nothing left. It must have broken him.”

Tillich argues “love shows what is just in the concrete situation” (1954, p. 82). In the final pairing of plaques, justice was served by the farmer who cared for his

neighbor’s farm. It reflects what Tillich calls the “second function of creative justice in personal encounters” which is “giving” (1954, p. 85). This is the ethical behavior the memorial wall seeks to foster. To remember the sad history of Japanese American internment is also to envision appropriate behavior toward others. This too is part of the story that must be told if that story is to be about forgiveness, the third formof creative justice, as well as oppression.

The Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial chooses to focus on a rhetoric of identification as it corrects the historical record of the United States. In contrast to the Portland, Oregon memorial, the focus is less on articulating theevidence of oppression and its denial of the Bill of Rights and more on how to behave ethically in listening, giving and forgiving the community of which one is a part.

Image 9: Bainbridge Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, August31, 2013.


Post-Apartheid Museums in South Africa: Telling a SubjugatedHistory

Unlike these memorials to Japanese internment found in the US, however, the version of history told through South Africa’s museums shows less diversity in approach. Whereas in the former,emphasis is placed on both the rights denied and ways to rebuildcommunity, South Africa took a very different approach to negotiating the memories of victims, falling in step more with Burke’s second possibility of communication, to separate, emphasizing divisions among racial lines (1969, pp. 20-21).

On paper, the transition from apartheid to democracy happened, relatively peacefully. Mandela's government was ushered in through popular vote, after years of hard work from those who fought to be heard. Had the National Party's Apartheidregime been physically or militantly overthrown, the defeated party members would surely suffer at the hands of the victors, as their refusal to give up power would justify stripping them of any access to it in the future. But instead, an astute de Klerk began a series of concessions that eventually ended in nothis overthrow but his electoral defeat at the hands of so many voting for the first time. Yet it would take more than a few handshakes to undo the centuries of damage done by colonizers – the restructuring of post-apartheid South Africa meant a total overhaul of the way South Africans saw themselves, their history, and in turn their future.

Through the museum sector the ruling ANC party saw thechance to take back the past, to make obvious the centuries-longsuffering of a people. Thus, black South Africans were far from

ready to concede this new platform, a chance to articulate a history of oppression, in the name of reconciliation. From this overhaul of history, three key museums emerge – The Apartheid Museum, the District Six Museum, and the Robben Island Museum. Each of these sites challenges the dominant narrative in a way that makes explicit challenges of whose history has the right tobe seen. Although they are not the product of a single politicalparty, they are each inherently political in nature and are partof a larger effort to construct a new national identity.

When the ANC released its response to MUSA, it accusedthe museums of blocking structural change to institutions in twoparts -- first for ignoring the “conscious and unconscious ideological functions of their collections," and second for offering “no dynamic strategy or major innovations. . .to counter-balance the weighty baggage of the past.” (Coombes, 2003, p. 16). Although it failed to describe any real solutions to this problem, it did provide a few traces of what the new ideology may look like, using the words "reconcile" and "counter-balanced." True to the vision of an equitable South Africa, the ANC seemed to demand not a totally demolition of oldmemory and not a ubiquitous presentation of the newly forming memory, but instead a newly-articulated memory to "counter-balance" the old. The is an idea not of replacement, but of supplementation. In the name of the new democratic country, both histories would have a chance to be displayed, working together to create a new historical narrative.

It is Hayden White who tells us that history naturally lends itself to the form of a narrative, a “mode of discourse ‘naturally’ suited to representing historical events directly.” (1992, p. 37). Yet it is not his concern that history is told like a story, but that it takes on the elements of a story, including plotlines, story-arcs, and a set of well defined characters. While this familiar formatting aids in the

absorption of the history, it also limits the kinds of "emplotments" the history/narrative can have, using familiar genres to define ways the history "can" or "cannot" be told, and"manifesting only one story, as being emplottable in only one way, and as signifying only one kind of meaning." (1992, 38). The “story” that would emerge from South Africa would define theway modern race relations are understood, who are the “good” andthe “bad” characters, and who owes who what.

The idea of both histories working together to form a new narrative is wonderful, in theory. Yet in practice, balancing competing narratives – and negotiating their politicalimplications – proved to be much more complicated. When the ANC quickly prioritized the organization of the CMMH, it was not merely in the name of remembrance for remembrance sake. Indeed, the uproar over the MUSA report was more than just a battle of whose history can be told, but a battle of whose ideology could be legitimated. Both the ANC and the NP recognized "the ideological leverage that such institutions potentially provide," (Coombes, 2003, p. 17) and thus the competition for visibility ensued.

One of the most contested areas of land was Robben Island, located off the western coast of Cape Town, itself having a long and sordid use by the various governments of SouthAfrica's past (“Robben Island”). With a long history of hosting the country's most unsavory characters, it was most recently (and most famously) used as a high security political prison, once holding Nelson Mandela himself. After the release of non-violent political prisoners in 1990, the island was emptied and,although still owned by the South African Government, lay feral until 1993.

A heated debate about the use of the island ensued. Many organizations claimed a vested interest in the place, from the Anglican Church to environmental organizations (Rodhen,

2008, p. 19). In the name of a democratic rebuilding of history,each of them were granted a voice in the decision making process. The result is the Robben Island Museum, opened in 1997,where visitors are transported to the island by ferries departing from the historic Victoria and Albert Waterfront and receive a tour in two parts: first a tour of the island from a guide and then of the prison itself from an actual ex-prisoner, where Nelson Mandela's prison cell continues to be preserved “intact” and is a highlight of the tour.

Although the Museum came into being through a seemingly democratic process, the narrative told through the space is undoubtedly emotionally loaded, focused on the suffering of an individual as told by an individual. In terms ofproviding a balanced history, the site does nothing to articulate or prevent the uni-dimensional casting of victims andperpetrators, proving that a "supplementary" history can indeed be one which inherently excludes the opposing view.

Other museums created around this time professed similar polarizing narratives, not just speaking of the racial divisions of the past, but in doing so reaffirming them in the present: South Africans of color were always the victims while whites – as a race and despite political affiliation – were always the victimizers. The District Six Museum tells the story of the sixth district of Cape Town, which was labeled a "White'sOnly Area" under the Group Lands Act of 1966. Once a thriving community of color, residents were evicted and the area was bulldozed under apartheid (“About the district”). The Museum is located in the former heart of the district and is strongly memory driven, providing a space for former residents to return and "claim" what they remember of the district, labeling a giantmap with homes and businesses. (See Image 10) The Museum also has a hand in negotiating restitutions for residents, having onefoot in the past and one in the present.

Likewise, the Apartheid Museum takes on the greatest manifestation of racism in the country's recent past, a dauntinghistory which naturally lends itself to clear definitions of victim and perpetrator. Yet again the Museum misses an opportunity to separate race from role in the regime, containingonly a small, temporary exhibit about a single white activist fighting against apartheid, located in a separate part of the museum. (See Image 11)

Image 10: The Floor Map at The District Six Museum, April 2009.

Image courtesy of Alyssa Anderson.

Image 11: The Helen Suzman exhibit at the Apartheid Museum, June2009.

Image courtesy of Alyssa Anderson.

Yet if this very literal casting of black and white roles were true, why did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission demand that both sides stand trial for their trespasses? In the name of restitution, these sites are able to overlook the demands of telling a balanced story in the name of first gettingto an equal playing field, a position of power high enough that would allow them to give some away.

Conclusions

These two case studies are differentiated by a number of things: number of oppressed, length of suppressions, and years in the past. One country must face its demons head on, while theother had to wait over thirty years for atrocities to be acknowledged. Yet both groups seek one thing: to be reunited with a society of which they were once full members. According

to Tillich it is love that drives us to reunite what has been separated, and it is justice which will preserve the things reunited (1954, p. 71). But what if the desire to reunite with society means to necessarily exclude those who had once poisonedit? What if there are times when the wounds of the past are too fresh, too painful, to simply dissolve into a new society?

These are the questions faced by broken societies trying tonavigate a painful past with a hopeful future. When both victim and victimizer still co-exist, the care with which each is namedis imperative to setting the foundations for a society where both can live. Does the ever-present adage of "never again," articulated at so many of these memorials and museums, hold withit a call to action in the present day? Must those who have beencategorically deemed committers of crimes be constantly remindedof past deeds? Must those who have only recently found their voice hide the extent of their abuse in the name of telling an "ethical" story, to reunite society? Indeed, cases such as theseabove seem to raise more questions than the answer, as the dynamic state of ethical storytelling is always in flux.

References

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Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Coombes, A. B. (2003). History after apartheid. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Post-Conflict Commemoration: Ethical Constraints in Museums & Memorials

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