Desegregating the past: The transformation of public imagination at South African and American museums

This dissertation compares the way museums re-imagine national history after the victories of the civil rights movement in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. This dissertation contributes to broader discussions about nationhood by considering how societies selectively acknowledge the reality of past racial oppression, while still imagining a coherent national identity and a common future.Using data from interviews with museum staff, participant observation and archival sources, I find that efforts to include people and experiences that were previously excluded are far more complicated than they might seem. Sometimes, they involve questions of physical transformation: how can communities re-configure those legacies of the past that are written in stone---the Confederate soldiers carved into the face of Georgia's Stone Mountain or the Voortrekker Monument outside Pretoria? But even more malleable exhibitions create conundrums: How should community-based museums like Milwaukee's Black Holocaust Museum or large national institutions like South Africa's Constitution Hill acknowledge different aspects of struggle? Should they emphasize divisive issues---like the murders and torture of civil rights activists---or emphasize unifying themes, in order to attract larger, less politicized audiences?I use comparisons of a range of museums in two very different settings to explore what I have come to think of as a 'political economy of memory.' Within this political economy museum and staff choices about content are shaped not only by scholarship, artifacts, and struggles over the truth, but also by more profound questions about identity and historical trauma and more prosaic issues of funding, attendance, and community involvement. My research at 18 American museums and 12 South African museums revealed a unique set of dilemmas facing institutions that concentrate on histories of racial oppression, resistance, and liberation. While many issues arose during interviews with museum directors, curators, and tour guides, all museums faced similar dilemmas about the presentation of untold truths and the reinterpretation of previously hegemonic narratives, along with issues of institutional capacity-building and survival in an extremely competitive heritage tourism market. The way museum staff tackle these dilemmas sheds light on the transformation of racial imaginations.