The preserving machine: The "new" museum and working through trauma-the Musée Mémorial pour la paix of Caen

History and Memory

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 77-103

  Brower, Benjamin C ^a  

^a Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847334109     PISSN: 0935560X     EISSN: 15271994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/ham.1999.0006     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, trans. Betsy Wing (Cambridge, MA, 1989).
2. Mémorial, Caen, Les tragédies de la liberté, 19 Nov. 1985, 2 (original emphasis). (All translations from the French are my own unless otherwise stated.)
3. Jean-Marie Girault, in the minutes of the Association pour un Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie (APMMBN), Assemblée générale, 23 Feb. 1981, Mémorial, Caen.
4. Rémy Desquesnes, Guide to the Mémorial (Rennes, 1991), 3.
5. Bulletin de l'Institut du Temps Présent 33(1988):5.
6. See Dominique Poulot's informative essay "Identity as Self-Discovery: The Ecomuseum in France", in Daniel Sherman and Irit Rogoff, eds., Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles (Minneapolis, 1994), 66-84.
7. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 297.
8. See Annette Wieviorka's illuminating work, Déportation et génocide: Entre la mémoire et l'oubli (Paris, 1992).
9. Eric Santner, "History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma", in Saul Friedländer, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 144.
10. See his "Guerre d'Algérie: Le Vietnam français?" in Charles-Robert Ageron ed., L'Algérie des Français (Paris, 1993);
11. and his Imaginaires de guerre: Algérie-Viet-Nam, en France et aux États-Unis (Paris, 1997).
12. Jean-Pierre Azéma and Henry Rousso, "La France des Années Noires", in Mémorial, Caen, Fiches Programme Historique, Sept. 1987.
13. Interview with Yves Devraine, La Lettre du Mémorial 4 (1987).
14. Yves Devraine in Claude Quetel, Un Mémorial pour la paix (Caen, 1992), 21.
15. Museum International 45(1993):21-24.
16. Desquesnes, Guide to the Mémorial, 19.
17. John Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French under Nazi Occupation (New York, 1986), 168.
18. Devraine in Quetel, Un Mémorial pour la paix, 49.
19. Memorial of the Battle of Normandy: A Museum of Peace, report on the Dedication, by the Committee of Veterans' Affairs, US House of Representatives, 100th Cong., 2d Sess., 1988, Committee Print 16(Washington, D. C., 1988), 25.
20. Mémorial, Caen, Livre d'Or (visitors' book), 28 Sept. 1991.
21. Jean-Marie Girault in Quetel, Un Mémorial pour la paix, 9.
22. See APMMBN, Assemblée générale, 23 Feb. 1981 and 3 June 1986, Mémorial, Caen.
23. APMMBN, 7 Dec. 1981.
24. See the conception of the museum outlined in Les tragédies de la liberté, 19 Nov. 1985.
25. Overheard by the author, 12 June 1994.
26. Jean-Paul Hauguel, Parcours pour la paix: Enfants de 9 à 12 ans (Caen, n. d.), 12.
27. See Martin Harwit, An Exhibition Denied: Lobbying the History of the Enola Gay (New York, 1996).
28. "Au nom des hommes", dir. Jean-Pascal Lévy-Trumet. In addition to the dancers, 500 other people were involved in the show.
29. Interview with Devraine, La Lettre du Mémorial 4 (1987).
30. International Herald Tribune, 6 June 1988.
31. Interview with Devraine (original emphasis).
32. Desquesnes, Guide to the Mémorial, 3.
33. André Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image", in Alan Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven, 1980), 238.
34. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York, 1977), 4.
35. Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image", 242.
36. Fiches Programme Historique, 6 Oct. 1987 (emphasis added).
37. see interview in Ouest-France, 12 Oct. 1990.
38. Desquesnes, Guide to the Mémorial, 28.
39. Livre d'Or, 30 Aug. 1993 (in French) and 29 Aug. 1993.
40. Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism", in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, vol. 21(London, 1957), 154.
41. See Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma t (Ithaca, 1994), 205-223.
42. This also informs much of his latest work, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, 1998).
43. For Friedländer see "Trauma, Transference and 'Working through' in Writing the History of the Shoah", History and Memory 4, no. 1(Spring/Summer 1992):51.
44. Andreas Huyssen, "Monument and Memory in a Postmodern World", in James E. Young, ed., The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (Munich, 1994), 12.
45. Louis Aragon and Jean Cocteau, Conversations on the Dresden Gallery, trans. Francis Scarfe (New York, 1982), 23.
46. Francesco Pellizzi, "Remains", Res 27(1995):7.
47. Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London, 1996), 76.
48. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York, 1981), 82.
49. Livre d'Or, 14 Aug. 1990.
50. Les tragédies de la liberté, 6.
51. Livre d'Or, 7 Aug. 1990.
52. Sid Ellis, interview by Nichole Brower, Mémorial, Caen, 14 June 1994.
53. Norman Morgan, interview by Nichole Brower, ibid.
54. Livre d'Or, 8 Sept. 1990 (in French).
55. Judging from comments in the Livre d'Or, many of the visitors would also read the Mémorial as most suited to a pacifist orientation: "For us it's more of a war museum. The part on peace is too superficial" (Doris Hawyles, 9 Aug. 1990);
56. or, "Looks a lot like a museum for war, not against-what a pity!!! especially the films-death in bright colours" (illegible name, 24 Aug. 1993);
57. "How learn children peace, if you sell WAR TOYS!" (Jan Boerstra, 18 Aug. 1990).
58. Ouest-France, 5 Feb. 1991.
59. Le Pays d'Auge, 18 Jan. 1991.
60. Livre d'Or, 10 Sept. 1993.
61. The organization la Fédération des oeuvres laïques, for one, has held seminars where, combined with a visit to the Mémorial, those who lived through the war are invited to talk to students (Ouest-France, 24 Feb. 1993).