Search

The discursive turn in heritage studies has made major contributions to our understanding of heritage as a set of processual practices, demonstrating how they are inherently contingent while acknowledging their role in the legitimation of specific relationships of power. More recently, there has been a related interest in the rhetorical uses of heritage, and the paper builds on these debates to explore the ways in which the National Gallery (London) mobilised a rhetoric about access as part of its scheme of post-WWII reconstruction. The popular 'Exhibition of Cleaned Pictures' (1947) sheds light on the rhetorical devices employed by the Gallery. These were a cogent example of the Gallery's intended programme of emancipatory viewership, premised on visitors' the right to look, but simultaneously reinforced the Gallery's authoritative discourses. The paper shows how photography's reportedly unbiased language became embedded in the Gallery's democratising agenda and helped shape distinctive forms of publicness which fostered a consensual view about the Gallery's practice of cleaning. Rather than seeing both episodes as mutually exclusive, the paper investigates the internal logic of democratisation and professionalisation as a series of co-dependent rhetorical operations that simultaneously enabled freedom and coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of six internationally recognised ‘Sites of Conscience’ in South Africa, District Six Museum in Cape Town has been at the forefront of the community museum movement since its inception in 1994. Organised by those directly affected by apartheid’s Group Areas Act, the Museum is dedicated to preserving and fighting for the rights and memories of those who were forcibly removed from their District Six homes between 1966 and 1982. A uniquely intimate space, the Museum seeks to balance empathy alongside what it calls ‘critical non-racialism’, as it engages in the ambitious project of re-defining racialised communities in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper explores the tensions between criticality and empathy in relation to District Six Museum’s photographic collection. Focusing particularly on the problem of perspective-taking, this paper analyses the ways in which gradual changes in the Museum’s visitor demographic are compromising its non-racial project. Based on qualitative research that suggests contemporary visitors are less likely to engage in the kind of reconstructive, politicised imaginings that the Museum’s displays require, this paper suggests that empathy, rather than a tool for critical engagement with District Six’s history, is increasingly becoming the means through which alternative memories of District Six are silenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of six internationally recognised ‘Sites of Conscience’ in South Africa, District Six Museum in Cape Town has been at the forefront of the community museum movement since its inception in 1994. Organised by those directly affected by apartheid’s Group Areas Act, the Museum is dedicated to preserving and fighting for the rights and memories of those who were forcibly removed from their District Six homes between 1966 and 1982. A uniquely intimate space, the Museum seeks to balance empathy alongside what it calls ‘critical non-racialism’, as it engages in the ambitious project of re-defining racialised communities in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper explores the tensions between criticality and empathy in relation to District Six Museum’s photographic collection. Focusing particularly on the problem of perspective-taking, this paper analyses the ways in which gradual changes in the Museum’s visitor demographic are compromising its non-racial project. Based on qualitative research that suggests contemporary visitors are less likely to engage in the kind of reconstructive, politicised imaginings that the Museum’s displays require, this paper suggests that empathy, rather than a tool for critical engagement with District Six’s history, is increasingly becoming the means through which alternative memories of District Six are silenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]