Museum-Cemetery: (Infra)Structural Violence Against Human Remains

In this paper, I investigate Polish memorial sites and museums established at former Nazi extermination camps, defined by the presence of human remains of their Jewish victims, through a conceptual prism of museum-cemetery. Museum-cemetery is construed here as a concept (an analytic category), a practice, and a dynamic cultural/political space, extending to include the burial sites curated by the memorial institutions. In my reading, museum-cemetery is a transformative and politically productive infrastructure that instantiates a material and spatial articulation of hierarchies and social norms as well as one of structural violence, and a complex politics of dead bodies. Acknowledging that not only living bodies but also those of the dead are subject to sovereign power, through various social and material practices, I argue that museums and memorial sites partake in the production and undoing of the dead. But they are also carriers of necroviolence: violence against human remains. Analysing the post-war history of Polish sites of memory at former Nazi extermination camps and the practices and infrastructural transformations that arise around them – including robbery of the dead, archaeological research, work on commemoration, musealization – I discuss the forms of necroviolence that affect dead bodies, from immediate physical violence to violence of abandonment.In this paper, I investigate Polish memorial sites and museums established at former Nazi extermination camps, defined by the presence of human remains of their Jewish victims, through a conceptual prism of museum-cemetery. Museum-cemetery is construed here as a concept (an analytic category), a practice, and a dynamic cultural/political space, extending to include the burial sites curated by the memorial institutions. In my reading, museum-cemetery is a transformative and politically productive infrastructure that instantiates a material and spatial articulation of hierarchies and social norms as well as one of structural violence, and a complex politics of dead bodies. Acknowledging that not only living bodies but also those of the dead are subject to sovereign power, through various social and material practices, I argue that museums and memorial sites partake in the production and undoing of the dead. But they are also carriers of necroviolence: violence against human remains. Analysing the post-war history of Polish sites of memory at former Nazi extermination camps and the practices and infrastructural transformations that arise around them – including robbery of the dead, archaeological research, work on commemoration, musealization – I discuss the forms of necroviolence that affect dead bodies, from immediate physical violence to violence of abandonment

Retracing Violence, Reshaping the Gaze, and Challenging the Collection. An Interview by Zuzanna Dziuban with Margit Berner, Curator of the Anthropological Collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna

Interview with Margit Berner, Curator of the Anthropological Collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, by Zuzanna Dziuban Interview with Margit Berner, Curator of the Anthropological Collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, by Zuzanna Dziuban&nbsp

Museum-Cemetery: (Infra)Structural Violence Against Human Remains

In this paper, I investigate Polish memorial sites and museums established at former Nazi extermination camps, defined by the presence of human remains of their Jewish victims, through a conceptual prism of museum-cemetery. Museum-cemetery is construed here as a concept (an analytic category), a practice, and a dynamic cultural/political space, extending to include the burial sites curated by the memorial institutions. In my reading, museum-cemetery is a transformative and politically productive infrastructure that instantiates a material and spatial articulation of hierarchies and social norms as well as one of structural violence, and a complex politics of dead bodies. Acknowledging that not only living bodies but also those of the dead are subject to sovereign power, through various social and material practices, I argue that museums and memorial sites partake in the production and undoing of the dead. But they are also carriers of necroviolence: violence against human remains. Analysing the post-war history of Polish sites of memory at former Nazi extermination camps and the practices and infrastructural transformations that arise around them – including robbery of the dead, archaeological research, work on commemoration, musealization – I discuss the forms of necroviolence that affect dead bodies, from immediate physical violence to violence of abandonment

Displaying Violence

This issue brings together analyses of power relations faced by museums around the world that exhibit histories of conflict or violence. It traces recent transformations in the way museums deal with the representation of violence: whether they reflect on the standpoint of victims and integrate their voices; whether they remain inclusive of marginalized communities; whether they address longsilenced legacies of violence; or whether they respond to ethical challenges associated with the display of images, objects and the curation of human remains. Examinations of culturally and geographically diverse curatorial practices highlight how museums challenge or perpetuate violence and hegemonic structures of power and marginalization, how they present a multiplicity of voices or homogenized narratives, and how they engage visitors with reflexive metaquestions. The understanding of violence in this issue is not limited to atrocities or physical harm but also raises questions about the violence of museum displays and the structural violence of the museum institution itself, past and present. By focusing on questions of colonial violence and its museological representation, many of the contributions highlight the centrality of this issue to current public debates and discussions on the identity of the institution. In their choice of cases, the papers also expand the notion of museum space to include not only sites of historical atrocities and offsite museums but also botanical gardens and public space

Campscapes in and through testimonies: New approaches to researching and representing oral history interviews in memorial museums

This paper discusses the role of audio and visual testimonies in safeguarding, understanding, presenting, validating and decentering the history and memory campscapes, be it, for researchers, practitioners, memory activists, or museum visitors. Its primary objective is to present and contextualize two research tools developed within the framework of the project Accessing Campscapes: Strategies for Using European Conflicted Heritage: the Campscapes Testimony Catalogue, a new directory of oral history interviews devoted to selected camps covered within the scope of the project; and the online environment Remembering Westerbork: Learning with Interviews – a prototype of an online display environment presenting survivors’ experiences to today’s visitors in an exemplary memorial that opens up, expands and complexifies the paradigmatic narrative offered by the campscape at the on-site exhibition

Forensik: Wem gehören die Toten

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Obcość,bezdomność,utrata

Książka Zuzanny Dziuban jest krytyczną prezentacją[...]filozoficznego stanu rzeczy, którego centrum tkwi-przeniknięte przez świadomość atopii-filozoficzno-kulturowe doświadczenie hermeneutyki radykalnej. Jest próbą zrekonstruowania hermeneutycznych narzędzi umożliwiających ujęcie swoistości doświadczenia atopii i jego charakterystykę [...] Tytułowe pojęcie atopii zostało przez autorkę w sposób nowatorski i z pełnym uzasadnieniem przeniesione z Gadamerowskiej interpretacji Platona w pole interpretacyjne wyznaczone przez koncepcję radykalnej hermeneutyki Johna Caputo i Gianniego Vattimo. Autorka śledzi funkcjonowanie tego pojęcia w trzech korespondujących ze sobą obszarach hermeneutycznych doświadczeń :obcości,bezdomności i utraty[...]Perspektywa interpretacyjna obu filozofów jest zaś w książce ukazana w kilku aspektach;genetycznie(głownie w odniesieniu do Nietzschego i Heideggera), kontekstowo(w zestawieniu z szeroko zakrojonymi badaniami nad doświadczeniem we współczesnej filozofii, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem ujęć m.in. Gadamera,Habermasa,Benjamina,Marquarda,Agambena) i "kontrapunktowo" (w zestawieniu z Derridiańską dekonstrukcją)