Journal
THEORY AND SOCIETY
Volume 42, Issue 1, Pages 57-80Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11186-012-9185-5
Keywords
Collective memory; Race and ethnicity; National conflict; Museums
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This article investigates how national histories marred by racial conflict can be translated into narratives of group identity formation. I study the role of identity-driven museums in converting American's racial past into a metanarrative of black identity from subjugation to citizenship. Drawing on a thick description of exhibitions at 15 museums, interviews with curators and directors, museum documents, and newspaper articles, I use the political economy of memory as a framework to explain how ideological and material processes intersect in the production of exhibitions. I show that in addition to struggles over the truth and interpretive styles, more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and institutional capacity-building hve an impact on representational selectivities. I explain how these issues affect black museums operating during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras. I consider the motivations and consequences of remembering national histories of violence and intolerance through the prism of group identity formation.
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