Between alterity and normality? Representations of Jewish history and identities
(manuscript under consideration by Routledge Jewish Studies Series;
the following is an extract from the Introduction)
More than a decade ago a book provocatively entitled Jews and Other Differences charted the developing field of the New Jewish Cultural Studies (Boyarin & Boyarin 1997). Since then, a host of titles have appeared contrasting Jews with majority social groups, indicating that representations of Jews in popular culture in the Western world function as markers of a whole array of ‘differences’. Jews provide a reference point for the perception of ‘the other’ in European societies. Representations of Jews in public discourses are understood as a litmus test of interpretations of alterity in the negotiation of majority-minority relations, and for the assessment of the success of combating inter-group hatred (see for example Purin 2008, p.146). Jews are among the most ancient and persistent minority ethnic, cultural and religious groups in Europe. A profusion of stereotypes and myths, prejudices and defamations attach to the image of ‘the Jew’ in European popular culture. One site of representations of Jews and Jewish history is the museum.
Museums are among the most popular institutions of knowledge transfer, working at the intersection of the academy with the interested public. Since the 1990s, a growing literature has focused on the relationship between the articulation of national identities and the museum (Anderson 1991; Bennett 1995). Prominent publications argue that the reshaping of national narratives in post-1989 Europe is eloquently represented in the refashioning of major national exhibition and museum projects (Bal 1996; Baudrillard 1996; Crane 2000; see also Ostow 2008). Museums are sites at which authoritative representations of historical topics are shared with the general public. This is particularly relevant when considering the representation of cultural and religious minorities in these institutions.
The growing number of representations of ‘Jewishness’ and of the place of Jews in European history in the exhibition environment of prominent museums indicate the significance of these subjects in the development of North American and European national cultures today. Analyzing the representation of Jews and Jewish history in permanent museum displays underlines wider concerns of the exhibitions themselves, inspired as they are by current majority-minority relations. In the current social-political climate in Europe, possibilities abound for minority ethnic and cultural groups to maintain and cultivate distinctive group identities while expressing loyalty to wider society. National exhibitions such as the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London (IWM) and the permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) contribute to these public debates, and make explicit reference to these discussions in their educational programmes. The exhibitions in the IWM and the JMB are understood and treated by their staff and the public as the official and authoritative statements of a nation or a community about the subject matter displayed, as is clear from the political attention and public funding they receive. With this in mind, this study examines how such national exhibitions represent the Jewish minority and its cultural and religious self-understandings, historically and today, in particular in the murderous context of the Holocaust (see also Rogoff 2002). The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the purpose and functioning of national exhibitions in public debates about national identity by examining display strategies which address the representation of the history of an exemplary minority and which focus on perceptions of its relations to the majority society.
The study is located at the theoretical interface between academic reflection in the field of Jewish Studies and the work of museum professionals, seeking to enhance the communication between the two areas of historiography and semiotics through a constructive critique of current exhibition practice (in a manner similar to Witcomb 2003). Addressed to academics and museum professionals alike, this study seeks to suggest room for practical changes in the representation of history in exhibitions. Doing so widens the concerns of Jewish Studies by exploring the knowledge transfer from the academy to society. I reflect on the concerns of curators and the curatorial strategies used in the realization of the exhibitions with the help of the New Museology developed since the 1980s. The New Museology recasts aspects of the field of Museum Studies by engaging with methods used in other disciplines of the humanities, notably critical theory and Foucault’s genealogical approach. This move away from the systems of classification and categorization which had hitherto characterized the field allows a broader approach to the museum and a critical view of the exhibition practices which constitute a major aspect of the communication between the museum and the public. In short, the New Museology recognizes the museum as a social-political institution with a complex history and asks questions regarding its purpose. By utilizing insights from the New Museology, this book is a study of curatorial practice as well as of the semiotics of exhibitions as they pertain to Jewish Studies.
This study aims to bring insights from the New Museology to the field of Jewish Studies through an exploration which focuses on the representation of Jewish history and Jewish identifications. These themes become the prism through which aspects of historiography and the display of the ‘otherness’ of minorities are addressed in this study. I argue that linear narrative historical exhibitions – exhibitions which visualize a historical narrative by leading the visitor on a prescribed path through its exhibition space – may gain from engagement with the New Museology’s post-modern approaches to exhibition display. I suggest that there are ways in which a linear narrative may helpfully be opened to a multiplicity of historical narrations which allow space for reflection on the variety of identifications and self-understandings which exist among the minority population. Regarding the representation of Jewishness, such multiplicity would enhance the current exhibition narratives by allowing visitors to explore historical complexities at a deeper level (Rogoff 2002; see also Bal 1996 and Baudrillard 1996). The insights of the New Museology may suggest the possibility of a more open relation to the ability of visitors to interact with complex display strategies, and certainly show that an authoritative linear narrative is no guarantee that visitors will take home the ‘lessons’ or ‘messages’ the curators wish to impart. Rather than dismissing linear narrative historical exhibitions as necessarily limiting the exploration of diverse perspectives on historical events, this study argues for the possibility of gainfully incorporating post-modern exhibition strategies from the New Museology into the existing frameworks provided in exhibitions. In exhibitions on Jewish history, and in those which specifically focus on the Holocaust, I will argue that there is scope for including conflicting interpretations of historical events in order to allow the visitor to explore a variety of assessments of a historical period, at the time the events were evolving and in the reconstructive gaze of the historian.
A sustained reflection on exhibition practices from the perspective of Jewish Studies is timely given the evolving debate about the representation of the history of minorities, of difference and ‘otherness’ in national museums. Museums of Jewish history have been considered by scholars primarily in relation to the context in which they are situated, be that Germany, Austria, the United States or elsewhere. Sometimes this discussion touches on the concerns of the New Museology, but generally there is hardly any reflection the relationship of the representations of Jewish history found in these museums to either wider questions regarding Jewish historiography or the complexities of representing Jewish identities (a notable exception being Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998).
Jewish ‘otherness’ is an implicit or explicit theme in exhibitions which focus primarily on the genocide of Jews in Europe during World War II. Exhibitions of Jewish history which primarily or prominently include the representation of aspects of the Holocaust have as yet not been considered as discrete subjects of the New Museology. Indeed, the representation of atrocity in museums has hardly been a topic of much museological attention (Williams 2007 charts this new field of enquiry). There are some works on the exhibition of slavery in the context of the heritage industry. These displays initially received severe criticism for their attempts to teach about the evils of slavery by creating a supposedly cathartic experience of slavery (Stanley 1998, p.175). Few exhibitions studied in the literature on museums deal directly with atrocity. However, in the last decade or so curators have begun to re-evaluate and restructure ethnographic displays, a move that was prompted by the recognition of the ideological history that implicated ethnography and anthropology in the colonial past. The changes in the ethnographic exhibition of culture are directly related to the rise of post-colonial studies and the involvement in actual exhibitions of the peoples such exhibitions are about (e.g. Karp & Lavine 1991; Stanley 1998). The insensitivity and violation of earlier displays is sometimes critiqued in newer exhibits themselves, thus introducing a self-reflexive quality to ethnographic displays which today is common to ethnography and anthropology (cf. for example Schindler 2003). However, genocide is often only indirectly commented on and is not necessarily the topic of the displays themselves. Genocide can and does form the background to some contemporary ethnographic exhibitions, but genocide outside of colonial settings is rarely reflected upon critically in the existing literature on museums. Institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC (USHMM) and the Museum of Tolerance – Beit HaShoah in Los Angeles (MOT) are mentioned in discussions on exhibition strategy. However, in these works discussions concerning the representation of the Holocaust are rarely referenced (for example in Stanley 1998; Clark 2003). Similarly, recent works on the representation of violent history, such as Paul Williams’ Memorial Museums (2007), position themselves in relation to museological discourse, but not in relation to Holocaust or Jewish Studies. Thus a study of exhibition practices relating to the history of the Holocaust and to longer perspectives on Jewish history is bound to cover new ground, and will contribute to a better understanding of the relevance of the representation of persecution and atrocity in the museum.
Representations of the Holocaust in museums are conceptualized by curators and employed by educators to aid the successful education of citizens of a multi-cultural society. The Holocaust is understood to teach lessons about racism, antisemitism and the breakdown of majority-minority relations, showing how these may lead to persecution and ultimately genocide. Echoing the curators of the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, David Cesarani suggested that the Holocaust illustrates the dangers of social exclusion and of the abuse of language and human dignity, and also challenges our relationship to technological and scientific advances and religious belief (Cesarani 1998). The IWM curators, following the educational directives of the USHMM, argued that the Holocaust ‘yields critical lessons for an investigation of human behaviour … [for] … what it means to be a responsible citizen’ (USHMM Guidelines for teaching the Holocaust quoted in Cesarani 1998; these aims are echoed in Bardgett 1998 and Ballin 1998). However, the main reason for investing in a national Holocaust exhibition in Britain was said to be ‘to have one attractive, accessible and authoritative source of facts’, because ‘due to the technologies of memory the museum will become a central artery for transmitting the facts about the Holocaust to future generations’ (Cesarani 1998, p.25).
In museums in general, and in Holocaust exhibitions in particular, visitors encounter people that are ‘other’ to themselves. ‘Other’ in the sense that the representations offered are of people who, in the majority, are ‘other’ to the viewer because they belong to different cultural, national, linguistic, and religious groups, and are different in age, gender and other respects from the aggregate group of visitors. While Holocaust exhibitions generally represent people with whom exhibition visitors cannot readily identify, there is often also an expectation that visitors come to consider those that are initially ‘other’ to be similar to themselves, so that they can come to understand themselves and their own choices in contemporary societies better (Berenbaum 1994). Therefore it is a concern of this study to contribute to the understanding of the messages which are communicated through the design of an exhibition, giving particular attention to ways in which the arrangement of the exhibition space directs the gaze of the visitor to the objects on display and suggests their interpretation. Each visitor will ‘read’ the exhibition in his or her own way and take away a variety of messages, depending on how s/he connects with the representations on offer. Nevertheless, a sustained reflection on the practice of displaying Jewish ‘otherness’ and majority-minority relations in Jewish history will yield insights regarding the possibilities of interpreting the exhibition narrative. The semiotics of an exhibition are dependent on the opportunities afforded by the display strategy and the abilities of the visitor to connect with these. In this study the focus is on exhibition practices. I argue that the exhibition architecture and the arrangement of artefacts therein privilege some interpretations of ‘Jewishness’ and Jewish history and obscures others.
This project is made possible by Research Leave from the University of Edinburgh (January-June 2009) and funding by the AHRC Research Leave Scheme (September-December 2009).
The research in Berlin was funded by The Moray Endowment Fund and The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.
