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Memorial Museums and “Good Feelings” -“Happy-ending” and “Bad Feelings” in an Unlikely Space-

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2021, (81), pp.179-207
  • DOI : 10.31310/HUM.081.06
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : April 7, 2021
  • Accepted : April 29, 2021
  • Published : May 31, 2021

Jimin Cha 1

1성균관대학교 하이브리드미래문화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

A memorial museum is a place of sorrow. However, those who have ever visited a memorial museum might have recalled at least an experience that ended with a positive feeling. Why does a space of mourning provoke “good feelings” and what does this phenomenon imply? Existing research of museums tends to be reluctant to analyze visitors’ emotional responses and to reflect their voices. Thus, based on the examination of the voices of the visitors, this study attempts to propose a new approach to museum research by considering not only the “good feelings”, but also the “bad feelings” that are provoked in the memorial museums. This study examines the emotional experiences in the context of memorial museums from three perspectives. The study examines first, how the phenomenon of the museum-goers being emotionally transferred to the victims makes the visitors “ruled by” emotions rather than reason. Second, the study scrutinizes how an exhibition creates disconnections by compartmentalizing past human rights abuses into individual tragedies of the victims as a result erasing the societal structural issues that caused the atrocity. Lastly, the study examines the “good feelings” and the “bad feelings”, which is an element that has been overlooked in the previous studies, in the memorial museums. Therefore, by actively utilizing visitor interviews on “good feelings” and “bad feelings”, which is a facet that has remained unexplored, this study intends to broaden and diversify the scope of museum discussions. For the discussions, it introduces the cases of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, where the author conducted visitor interviews.

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