Sabine Mannitz and Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann guest-edited a special issue of the journal Cultural Dynamics titled “Displaying and Processing Political Violence in Museum Spaces”. The issue discusses how museums narrate or make visible political violence, and is published online first. Most articles are published open access.
The issue includes three articles by PRIF researchers: Sabine Mannitz and Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann introduce the special issue with their article “Displaying and Processing Political Violence in Museum Spaces”. Employing a historical perspective, they conceptualize museums as crucial but controversial places for dealing with political violence and raise the question of how museological practices can do justice to the complexity of the topic.
In collaboration with Rita Theresa Kopp, Sabine Mannitz contributed the article “‘The City Before the City’: Attempts at Unravelling Colonial Violence in Canadian Museums”. The article deals with settler colonialism in Canada and looks at museums as institutions of the colonial education system.
Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann's contribution “'Deconstructed Bodies: In Search of Home' - Amna Elhassan's (Temporary) Memorial for the Khartoum Massacre 2019” analyzes the artistic reappraisal of the massacre of 3 June 2019 in Khartoum. It explores the intersection of political violence, artistic expression and collaborative interdisciplinary research methods.
The three PRIF researchers work at the research center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe). It investigates whether and how forms of political violence are changing in the face of current global developments. One field of research focuses on interpretations of past or present political violence, such as those emerging in memory discourses and spaces of remembrance. TraCe is represented in the special issue by four other researchers.
Access to these and the other articles of the Special Issue can be found on the SageJournals website.