It can be Helped: Survivor Docent Testimony at the Japanese American National Museum
Narratives of Identity in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
ISBN: 978-1-78635-078-7, eISBN: 978-1-78635-077-0
Publication date: 16 August 2016
Abstract
In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum, a site that has come to represent and serve as a form of reparation for the traumatic memory of Japanese American internment during World War II. As a longer term supplement to trials or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions or an alternative in cases where no such structures exist, I illustrate how the museum tour becomes an empowering platform for survivors of the American Internment camps to work through and instrumentalize traumatic memories within the dialogic museum sphere, even as this alternative space forms its own new silences. Thus, by applying the very theories and criticisms through which scholars of memory politics evaluate official platforms of transitional justice, I aim to complicate and evaluate this alternative form of testimony, and in so doing explore areas of growth in the fields of both transitional justice and museum practice. Bridging the gap between testimony, oral history, and museum interpretation, survivor docents represent a sustained dialogic approach to history that perpetuates, preserves, and activates – rather than resolves – discourse around contentious memories.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the staff and docents of the Japanese American National Museum for sharing their time, reflections, and experiences, JANM Director of Education Allyson Nakamoto, Dr. Kimberly Theidon, Dr. Steven Lubar, Dr. Anne Valk, Kenneth Fox, Safta Fox, Chavi Fox, the editor and anonymous reviewers for their invaluable insights, resources, and suggestions along the way.
Citation
Fox, R.E. (2016), "It can be Helped: Survivor Docent Testimony at the Japanese American National Museum", Narratives of Identity in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 40), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-85. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-786X20160000040004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited