Fragility in Memory Production: A Comparative Ethnography on Two Memorial Museum Commemorating WWII Atrocities in the U.S. and China

Scholars have long explored the role of memorial museums as a material, institutional form of producing and legitimizing a particular articulation of collective memory of a historical atrocity. Using archival and content analyses, these studies provide rich empirical descriptions of museum content and their associated historical backgrounds. Yet missing from this scholarship is the role of human agency in memory production; in particular, how museum workers, whose identities infiltrate multiple social networks of the commemorative politics and economy, produce and elevate certain forms of memorial narratives and practices in reaction to contemporary social, political, and economic challenges. To answer this question, the author conducted comparative ethnography at two memorial museums in the U.S. and China that commemorate WWII atrocities – a privately funded Holocaust Museum in a liberal democracy and a government-owned museum on Japanese war violence in an authoritarian state. Despite their differing funding streams and political contexts, both museums resort to a distinct composite model of memory-making that strategically blends nationalistic fervor and universalistic humanitarianism that characterize the group as one of the many tragically victimized by war horrors. However, the model is fraught with tension and risks dissolution during times of crises, especially when the group goes through another round of perceived victimization or is portrayed as “perpetrators,” because the structure of epistemological domination and capitalist exploitation undergirding the model remains intact. This paper illuminates how seemingly benign efforts to transcend historical trauma and build long-lasting peace can be inherently violent if commemorative institutions continue operating within a global structure of violence.