The U.S. Holocaust Museum as a Scene of Pedagogical Address

Abstract

historical and metaphoric, unique and universal. The tension and discourse between these poles is inherent in essence of Museum and its educational work. One can say that, at any single moment, educational process is taking place in space between one pole and other. To preserve overwhelming power of concrete event and, at same time, symbolic, universal implications inherent in it, should never be an attempt at resolving tension between poles. (Weinberg and Elieli 19) In other words, of permanent exhibit is line inscribed by visitors as they space between binaries. And how could it be otherwise? To address visitors in ways that invite them to take up positions at either one binary pole or other, would be to invite them to assume positions within very configuration of relations that perpetrated Holocaust: insider/ outsider, us/ them, human/ inhuman, victim/ perpetrator, Aryan/ nonAryan. On other hand, to promote a that resolves tensions between poles would be to promote what Adam Phillips calls misleading idea that we are all in search of completion (122). Phillips continues: Bewitched by notion of being complete, we become obsessed by notions of sameness and difference, by thoughts of what to include and what to reject in order to keep ourselves [and our stories] whole (122). But, Phillips argues, there is no cure for multiple plots (75). As visitors walk through story of this narrative museum, they are literally positioned in spaces between video monitors, life-size photographs, displayed artifacts, text, and audio recordings. Even though texts presented are arranged in roughly chronological order along a corkscrew path, we do not read or hear or view a linear line. Rather, we are placed physically in spaces between story's This content downloaded from 157.55.39.144 on Wed, 11 May 2016 06:27:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 20 Elizabeth Ellsworth Pedagogical Address and Holocaust Museum elements. We are entwined with elements. From spaces between, is no line, only a three dimensional competition for our attention. Every visitor to exhibit will traverse [their] own path, crossing previous lines of locomotion (Dannatt 14). No two paths or lines of attention compose same story. Indeed, the of narrative exhibit is never stated. Instead, is a constant deferral of story. There is a continual opening up of space between resolved binary terms or resolved endings, knowings or understandings. This is accomplished, in part, by repeated interruption of any single line of attention, of any single sequential development of a line out of exhibit's separate elements. For example, while elements are grouped into themes and events, such as Nazi Propaganda or Resistance, is no linear causeeffect explanation linking these groups. And within each grouping, elements can be encountered in any order, as when visitors come upon groupings of elements labeled Nazi Propaganda, Nazi Society, and Search for Refuge simultaneously. Even within groupings, relations between elements within a group are seldom linear. On any given display panel, video testimonies or archival footage are not offered as direct illustrations of printed text. Nor does text explain video. Their association is not one of illustration or explanation. Rather, their association is topographical. Each element provides another facet, another perspective, another relation to theme or