Narrating loss - the relation between museums, difficult heritage and nationalism

Under the phrase "Never again!" dealing with past suffering is often prescribed as an instrument to tackle nationalist and right-wing developments within liberal democratic societies. However, while contemporary societies remember more than ever (Huyssen 1995), nationalist movements have gained momentum over the last decade - undermining this assumption.

Previous studies have shown that nationalist narratives can emerge not despite but because of the way societies remember past grievances (e.g. Dragovic-Soso 2002, Lerner 2020). My project will add a focus on museums as vectors of this process.

Looking at three countries that are rarely compared, it will contribute to the understanding of nationalist narratives, which often inspire violence (Feldman, 2001). I will look a three cases where what Logan and Reeves call (2009) "difficult heritage" has become a cornerstone of national identity. In Bosnia, the atrocities of the Bosnian war 1992-1995 and especially the genocide in Srebrenica have defined a post-war national identity based on victimhood for the Bosniak part of the population.

Bosnia remains a divided society where the memory of the war is contested and nationalist politicians "have gradually escalated memory wars into a discourse about the threat of another physical war" (Barton Hronesova and Hasic 2023, 8). In Germany, Holocaust memory has become a pillar of liberal democracy (Doughan, 2022). However, the guilt of being the perpetrator state was replaced by a positive narrative of being a "master atoner" (Berger, 2012).

While this narrative is being challenged (e.g. Jureit 2010, Ozyurek 2023), for the last decades it has contributed immensely to post-war German nationalism (Olick, 2008). Finally, in the US the Lost Cause myth which dates back to the Civil War and combines heroism and victimhood into a white supremacist narrative has resurfaced over 150-years after the war ended - with dire consequences: Neiman argues the ongoing memory war in the US could even escalate into a new civil war (2021).

All these narratives have difficult heritage as their main reference point, however they differ with regard to the amount of time which has passed since the respective events happened, as well as in which way the grievances have been incorporated in national identity. Choosing three cases over three different temporalities allows for a comparative study that looks at how narratives of past grievance are woven into social fabric over time, which events influence the popularity of these grievances and if (and how) similar patterns of nationalist narratives related to past grievances can emerge in very different contexts.

My study will account for the role museums play in the development of those narratives - my hypothesis is that rather than fostering an understanding of the past that helps preventing further atrocities, the exhibitions can preserve grievances, making them available for nationalist ideas to draw from when politically expedient. This form of revival could be observed, for example, during the Capitol attack on January 6th, 2021 when attackers made clear references to the Civil War (Drexel, 2022).