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The Preserving Machine: The "New" Museum and Working through Trauma -- the Musee Memorial pour la Paix of Caen

1999; Indiana University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ham.1999.0006

1527-1994

Benjamin Claude Brower,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

The Preserving Machine: The “New” Museum and Working through Trauma--The Musée Mémorial pour la Paix of Caen * Benjamin C. Brower (bio) Museums have a strange way of following in the footsteps of slaughterhouses. Denis Hollier 1 The Musée Mémorial pour la paix, which opened its doors on 6 June 1988 in the French city of Caen, claims to be a new type of museum. Taking as its subject World War II, it aims at being not just another warehouse for the artifacts of the past, nor a collection of rusting military relics, but a monument to the democratic values of peace, fraternity and liberty, and a memorial to those who died on the beaches of Normandy to preserve these ideals. In the words of the design committee, “The goal of the city of Caen’s project is to assure the COLLECTIVE MEMORY of the event by establishing it in the current, and future, generations by the creation of the Musée Mémorial.” 2 The committee hoped that this memory would inspire visitors to engage actively in the causes of peace and democratic political systems which, according to the Mémorial, are mutually sustaining. These values were assumed to be inscribed in the events of World War II, events that the designers of the museum saw not as “a struggle of peoples, but a battle of Liberty and [End Page 77] Dictatorship,” a battle with “risks [that] are still just as real for democracies.” 3 The guide book further elaborates this point in speaking about the museum’s mission: [T]he Memorial exists to defend the cause of Peace. Its ambition is to fight for the advancement of the rights of man and so to collaborate in lessening world-tensions ... the Memorial invites visitors to reflect on the scourge of War; and on ways of acting to restore or maintain Peace. 4 In addition, the Mémorial museum was intended to be of a new type in the methods it used to communicate its message. Rather than static displays of objects, the designers of the museum chose the latest media technology which would allow the visitor to appreciate the war in ways that would not be possible in a traditional display—they could reexperience the emotions once felt by those who lived at that time. Moving images, sound effects, color and architectural space would all combine to create a sense of “recall.” Finally, the Mémorial was to be new in that it would include the latest scholarly research on the war. Whereas older museums told stories about the past which were either hopelessly biased or completely archaic, the designers of the Mémorial aspired to present a truthful, balanced account. To this end the museum secured the participation of the prestigious Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent. François Bédarida headed the team of experts which included Jean-Pierre Azéma, Philippe Buton, Étienne Foulloux, Robert Frank, Denis Peschanski, Henry Rousso and Dominique Veillon. 5 These scholars worked hand-in-hand with architects and curators with the goal of presenting an in-depth and accurate history. With such objective knowledge, the visitor would be better able to integrate the lessons of the past into his or her contemporary world view. 6 In this article I shall assess the role of the Caen Mémorial in postmodern memory work. I will center this assessment on a psychoanalytic concept of what is at stake in the remembrance of historical events such as World War II, namely historical traumas and the importance of their mourning or working-through. I will proceed to discuss the ways in which the war’s trauma is represented in the museum and what role this plays in mourning work. I conclude my discussion by arguing that [End Page 78] although the narratives and media of the museum are largely counterproductive to working-through, the Mémorial by its very presence does make a positive impact. I argue that the Mémorial acts as something we might call a repressed signified: although it represses the traumatic aspects of its subject, it is, nevertheless, unable to fully contain the meanings generated by...