A Postcolonial Museum of War: Curating War and Colonialism at Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum

Abstract

This essay explores how the War Remnants Museum located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is an example of a postcolonial war museum. The War Remnants Museum shows how war, both as a concept and a colonial venture, limits our imagination about humanity and about contemporary logics, rationalities and practices of peace. Whereas war museums in the West instruct patrons that war can be attributed to human biology and an essential(ized) part of the process of human civilization, the War Remnants Museum shows how war is a consequence of colonialism. Postcolonial self-representation in museums provides domestic and international patrons with a perspective on war that centres the national narrative about colonial struggle and war.