Reflecting and forging master narratives: A discursive analysis of a Belgian WWII museum's curatorial selection process

Abstract

Sociolinguistics can help us grasp how collective memory cultures are (in part) shaped by representations of historic events through varied linguistic – and other – sources (e.g. education, news media, conversations and museum displays). In this study, we specifically zoom in on the curatorial selection process of a Belgian Second World War (WWII) memorial museum, whilst simultaneously exploring the reflexive relation between this curatorial process and the wider WWII remembrance context. To this end, we compare exhibited video testimony fragments to the full testimonies available in the museum's research centre, to examine which narratives were selected or silenced. Additionally, we confront fine-grained analyses of the testimonies with master narratives on WWII remembrance. As our analyses illustrate, the exhibited fragments align with these – typically coherent – master narratives, while the full testimonies are complex. Overall, we show that museums not only reflect master narratives, but are also sites for forging them.