Guilt, Grief and Empathy

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the traditional educational role of museums has been renegotiated and modified. In the nineteenth century monuments and museums were seen as instruments for defining national identity by interpreting the past in martyr-like or heroic narratives which encouraged pride or at least unequivocal identification with the nation. Jay Winter argues that the First World War marked a shift in commemoration paradigms as monuments became the centre of ritualistic public mourning, a place for the bereaved to grieve for individual soldiers whose deaths were nevertheless redeemed within a narrative of communal sacrifice for a greater good (Winter 1995: 80). In contrast, contemporary museums are assigned the social responsibility of providing a controlled and safe environment in which all members of society can potentially expose themselves to past events that are difficult to remember because they are painful and/or controversial and inspire guilt rather than pride. Memorial museums have been assigned the role of society’s conscience. But maybe this is not such a major break with the museum’s traditional educational role after all, because according to Cameron, the task

to improve the human condition, to act as sites for the formation of values and incubators of change, appears reminiscent of the older and now unacceptable moralising and reforming treatise. […] Are the contemporary discourses of social responsibility simply a revisionist version of the older ideal? (Cameron 2007: 330)