Difficult Heritage Research Articles

Negotiating difficult (in)tangible heritage: the intricate journey of museum making for the “Dai-ichi Saloon” comfort station in Shanghai

ABSTRACT The heritage of comfort women has always remained on the periphery of authoritative heritage, classified as a “difficult heritage,” facing a predicament of social marginalization, government concealment, and international controversy. This article addresses the negotiations, discussions, and compromises involved in the process of safeguarding the Dai-ichi Saloon, which is on the verge of becoming a museum. It is a priority for the most difficult heritage to be musealized, which is one of the most common methods of “normalizing” to ensure preservation and dissemination. The museumization of Dai-ichi Saloon has involved four stages, through which, scholars, residents, Shanghai citizens, and the government, as the four major stakeholders, have developed different understandings of the Dai-ichi Saloon as a difficult heritage. This article argues that the key reason for this misalignment lies in the misplaced sequence of actions among agencies during the “normalization” process. Through the intricate process of the museum making for Dai-ichi Saloon, this article aims to offer lessons for the museum’s approach to the normalization of difficult heritage.

Lost in translation? Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop and its local and transnational reader

Jáchym Topol, who is a Czech writer and poet, has several times emphasized that he does not care about his readers, especially foreign ones who get to read translated versions of his work, as it is not his job to be understood. With the rise of transnational WWII-related literature in the Czech Republic in the last two decades, I explore how his novel The Devil’s Workshop has become an important work in the realm of transnational literature, despite Topol’s peculiar writing style and stance towards his international readers. In my analysis, I explore Topol’s writing style, the novel’s socio-historical context through the concept of difficult heritage and the juxtaposition of Czech and Belarusian WWII narratives, as well as the novel’s local and international reception.

Never Again! Fandom and the Culture of Remembrance in German Football

Sport and politics have historically nurtured intrinsic connections. This article examines the role of a left-wing-oriented German football fan movement in confronting the Nazi past of football clubs. Focusing on FC St. Pauli, Werder Bremen, and SV Babelsberg 03, it explores the development of a nationwide culture of remembrance to avoid the resurgence of authoritarian regimes. We theorize that Germany’s Holocaust cultural trauma that developed new notions of time has influenced fans’ remembrance work, which includes the change of institutional official narratives of the clubs’ Nazi pasts. While acknowledging Germany’s sociocultural, political and temporal factors to explain this phenomenon, we call for action within sports organizations and fan bases of other Western countries to revisit their difficult heritage.

From Chinese food to Japan’s Hokkaido heritage: The transformation of the grilled mutton or lamb dish ‘Jingisukan’

Jingisukan is a dish in which mutton or lamb and vegetables are grilled using a uniquely shaped pan with a convex center. It originated from the popular Chinese dish ‘Kao Yang Rou’ (grilled mutton), which was discovered by Japanese individuals in Beijing and underwent modifications, leading to the creation of the distinctive name ‘Jingisukan.’ This dish was then introduced to the Japanese in Northeast China, specifically known as ‘Manchuria,’ and gained fame as a specialty of ‘Manchukuo,’ being highly valued even by the Japanese army. Following Japan’s defeat in World War II, Jingisukan became a local dish in Hokkaido and was recognized as a ‘Hokkaido Heritage’ in 2004. The widespread popularity of this dish in Japan can be attributed to its association with Genghis Khan. This study views Jingisukan as a type of ‘colonial cuisine’ and elucidates its dissemination by comparing it with examples such as British curry. Furthermore, it considers this cuisine a ‘difficult heritage’ to evaluate, examining how people in post-World War II Japan perceived the history of Jingisukan’s association with imperialism and how they transformed it into a local dish in Hokkaido. Jingisukan became widely popular after World War II and was initially perceived as a Chinese dish. This association evoked nostalgia for mainland China, where the Japanese Empire had expanded its influence before and during the war. In Hokkaido, Jingisukan became particularly favored for outdoor dining. By the 1960s, it gained nationwide recognition, with mutton imported from overseas. Simultaneously, Jingisukan has been actively promoted as a tourist attraction in Sapporo and throughout Hokkaido.

Reframing Difficult Heritage? The Holocaust Monuments in Croatia

ABSTRACT The article focuses on two monuments in Croatia that commemorate the Second World War and the Holocaust. The first is the Stone Flower monument (Kameni cvet/cvijet) located at the Jasenovac Memorial Site, designed by Bogdan Bogdanović and unveiled in 1966. The second is the Tangible Absence monument (Prisutna odsutnost/Memorial to Victims of the Holocaust and the Ustasha Regime), unveiled 77 years after the war’s end. It is located in the centre of Zagreb and was created by sculptor Dalibor Stošić and architect Krešimir Rogina. Both of these monuments are representative of how the official memory regarding the events of the Second World War is changing in Croatia. They reflect the internal social and political changes occurring within the territory of former Yugoslavia (now in this case Croatia). The main objectives of this text are to provide a comprehensive description of the monument creation process, highlight the meanings conveyed by these monuments, and to address the question of how new official forms of commemoration in Croatia respond to the global processes of reimagining Holocaust memory.

Między odrzuceniem a uznaniem: podejście do dziedzictwa niemieckiego w Katowicach i Metzu

Katowice and Metz were subject to intensive urbanisation and industrialisation from the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of the First World War. The German authorities were the initiator of the dynamic development of both these cities. The effects of these activities are still visible in the cities’ urban spaces, and constitute part of the cultural heritage. As such, they are becoming a part of the identity narratives jointly shaping the contemporary visions of the cities. Questions posed by this article include that concerning the place that traces of this “German” past occupy in the collective consciousness of these cities’ residents. What processes and stages allowed the gradual integration of these “traces” into the residents’ overall tangible and intangible collective memory? Which social groups, institutions, and organisations are the bearers of the memory of this part of the past? And finally, what needs to be done for German heritage to cease being a difficult heritage, and what role could reference to European heritage play here?

Kłopotliwe dziedzictwo w turystycznym kontekście. Opolscy przewodnicy i ich strategie narracji o tym, co nieobojętne społecznie

The article aims to show the dissonant heritage of Opole from the perspective of tourist guides. Its first section shows the dissonant heritage in relation to tourism, especially cultural tourism, heritage tourism and dark tourism. The role of the tourist guide in constructing narratives about difficult heritage is then considered. Empirically, the article endeavours to identify the elements of Opole’s dissonant heritage discerned by tourist guides, and the ways of telling tourists about them. Ten qualitative interviews were conducted with Opole guides. Analysis of the narratives reveals that the dissonant heritage of Opole is perceived by the guides from several perspectives. This primarily means their own, entangled in the social characteristics of the guide (e.g. national identity), in the context of the specificity of the group that the guide is showing round, and in the context of their reactions to the guide’s stories or sites visited.

Dziedzictwo konfliktu klasowego a lokalna polityka pamięci

The conceptual framework of “difficult heritage” was developed in studies concerning various forms of collective violence. This article is grounded on the assumption that it can also be applied in the context of socio-economic inequalities, since under the hegemonic dominance of interpretations of the past that conform to the interests of the elite, the experiences of subordinated categories become “troublesome.” As such, stories of both oppression and emancipation are forgotten or neutralized. From this perspective, the mechanisms of obscuring and mainstreaming of collective interests and related conflicts as elements of “legitimate” history seem particularly interesting. Drawing on the notions of agonistic memory and museum as agonistic space, the author analyses the permanent exhibition at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, reinterpreting the local history of industrial development. The paper aims to determine the place of industrial conflict in the narrative of the history of an industrial city. It is organized around three questions. First of all, what aspects of industrial relations are discussed in the museum narrative? Are they framed mostly by structural determinants or rather presented as individual and collective experience? Secondly, how are these relations contextualized? And thirdly, which modes of narrative are engaged? And is the conflict between workers and those in charge of the means of production a moral or rather a socio-political issue?

Polityka pamięci „żołnierzy wyklętych”

Referring to the concept of hegemony, the article focuses on memory politics regarding the “cursed soldiers”. It analyses how and why the conservative-nationalist right wing invented the “cursed soldier” figure and elevated it to the role of a key historical symbol in its hegemonic project of remodelling Polish collective memory in keeping with its ideology. Drawing on the concept of difficult heritage, the paper argues that hegemonic memory politics presupposes the transformation of the disputed heritage of the underground into a taken-for-granted symbol of the “cursed soldiers” representing a narrowly defined “Polishness”, and expressing the emotions of national pride, resentment and martyrdom. At the same time, on the basis of qualitative research, the article examines the process of the grassroots reception of this symbol, revealing selected aspects of its difficult nature.

Cmentarz wojenny w Nadolicach Wielkich – trudne dziedzictwo?

The aim of the article is to examine from a cultural perspective the issue of German war cemeteries in Poland, which were established after 1989 in order to provide the hitherto scattered and devastated burial sites with legal protection.The author addresses the problem of difficult heritage, taking the cemetery in Nadolice Wielkie as an example. She charts the history of the earlier dismantling of German cemeteries, including those from the war, and presents the legal conditions for establishing new Germany necropolises. The second section of the article provides an overview of comments found online regarding the Nadolice cemetery: voices opposing the remembrance of criminals, argued with reports (already disproved) of the burial of members of certain units, as well as frequent opinions of a conciliatory nature. The author concludes by stating that although the spatial organisation of the cemetery is intended to encourage reflection on reconciliation and peace, little is known of its mission, which is linked to the cemetery’s absence in the media.

The spectral geographies of slavery: tourism and the hauntings of dissonant colonial heritage

The spectral geography of the colonial legacy in Bristol is marked by a series of absences from official and tourist narratives about the city. The people and practices of the Atlantic slave trade are part of the historical and contemporary fabric of the city and persist as ever-present spectres. There are significant differences of view that agree with little beyond that the city was a major port of Empire and a significant site in the triangular trade. Bristol is commonly portrayed as a multicultural city with a rebellious spirit and a strong commitment to social justice. This urban imaginary is evident in accounts of the removal of a statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader and philanthropist, during a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020. The now empty plinth of the Colston statue has become a contested, liminal space that sits between disparate interpretations and radically different points in time in terms of social relations. Individual and collective memories and stories about slavery constitute hauntings in a spectral geography of Bristol. Such stories are rarely heard, and the city is thus haunted by the absences of the voices of those enslaved and a lack of knowledge of the role of slavery in the growth and historic prosperity of the city. Little has been done to incorporate such dissonant heritage and so the histories of slavers, slavery, and slaves are not significant themes in tourism marketing, attractions or experiences in the city. This paper demonstrates that a process of coming to terms with difficult heritage and associated hauntings offers significant potential for tourism to contribute to historic and contemporary social justice.

Facing a “Difficult Heritage”

Facing a “Difficult Heritage”

Heritage Without Heirs: The German Legacy in Serbia. The Case of the Museum of Danube Swabians

This article focuses on the first historical museum in Serbia, established in Sombor in 2019 (the Museum of the Danube Swabians), with an exhibition devoted to the presence of Germans in Vojvodina. The artefacts presented at the exhibition, left behind by the Germans who used to live in Vojvodina, have been recognised as part of Serbia’s difficult heritage (the term coined by Sharon Macdonald). The article analyses the permanent exhibition and the museum’s efforts to involve the local residents in creating said exhibition. The article also asks whether the museum in Sombor can shape the collective identity of Serbs and undermine its ethno-nationalist character.

The Difficult Heritage of Dictatorship in Europe

The Difficult Heritage of Dictatorship in Europe

Teaching the difficult heritage of Italian Fascism

AbstractIn recent years, the architectural legacy and so-called ‘difficult heritage’ of Fascist Italy has become a flourishing field of research. These topics have also begun to make their way into the undergraduate classroom. To date, however, there has been little research carried out into the methods we use to teach the history of Fascism in particular. In this short article, we outline how we have applied problem-based learning and scenario-based learning approaches to tackle this topic. After presenting three assignments, we explain the benefits associated with a PBL/SBL approach, summarised under the headings of interdisciplinarity, creativity and authenticity, before highlighting some aspects on which colleagues may wish to reflect if they are considering adopting a similar approach in their teaching.

Difficult Heritage in Southeastern Europe: Local and Transnational Entanglements in Memorializing Political Prisons after Socialism

Throughout Central and Eastern Europe, various governments supported the creation of memorial museums of political violence during state socialism. While much scholarly attention has been given to Hungary’s House of Terror and the Baltic museums of occupations, this article examines the contrasting situation in Southeastern Europe, where state actors were generally absent and which witnessed relatively belated and overwhelmingly bottom-up processes. The article analyses the particularity of political prisons as ‘difficult heritage’. It scrutinizes the commonalities and entanglements between the memorialization of political prisons in three Southeastern European countries marked by distinctive trajectories both during and after communism: Albania (Spaç), Romania (Sighet and Piteşti), and Croatia (Goli Otok). The article shows how in the absence of state-level policies to address transitional justice, activism surrounding difficult heritage memorialization has aimed to fill the gap. It also argues that the relationship between site memorialization in Southeastern Europe and the wider European models is doubly constitutive: first, the memorialization of Sighet in 1990s Romania borrowed approaches from Western European Holocaust memorialization, then shaped a European wide set of best practices; second, a wave of new memorial initiatives after 2010 in Southeastern Europe was connected to the Europeanization of memory and transnational engagements.

From nonhuman to postsecular: transformation of the difficult heritage of Soviet repressions in post-Soviet Russia

ABSTRACT Transforming social perceptions of those repressed by the Soviet regime in the late eighties, prompted urgent action to deal with difficult Soviet heritage, especially with landscapes of the dead buried in mass graves. However, human engagement in transforming these traumaspaces revealed that these landscapes had already been transformed by non-human actants - plants and trees – often as witnesses to the crimes themselves. Therefore, in planning their commemorations, human memory activists had to negotiate the landscape with non-human actants and often attribute some human significance to the memory work they performed. This article discusses how Soviet traumaspaces were slowly transformed from non-human commemorations to commemorations meticulously planned by humans. From the very beginning, these human commemorations used both religious and secular languages. However, when the state actively engaged in the commemoration of the victims of Soviet repressions after 2015, a new constellation of power relations between civil society, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the state emerged, which, over time, led to the appearance of post-secular commemorations.

Beyond Rome: Brescia and the Difficult Heritage of Italian Fascism

Physical reminders of Fascist rule in Italy can be found in virtually every Italian town and city. To date, though, studies of how Italians have dealt with this ‘difficult heritage’ have focused overwhelmingly on Rome, where Fascism's copious remains are treated and admired as aesthetic objects, unmoored from their political–historical origins. Implied, assumed or articulated in these studies is the idea of Rome as an exemplar of the nation: that what is true of the capital is true of the country. In fact, the idea that Rome's approach to its Fascist heritage is representative of Italy's has yet to be properly tested. This article argues for the need to go ‘beyond Rome’ in order to gain a deeper, richer, and more nuanced understanding of the ways in which Italians have negotiated the difficult heritage of Fascism. Focusing on the provincial Lombard city of Brescia, the article reveals the complex interplay between time, place, use, memory, aesthetics, and politics in shaping how bresciani have negotiated three surviving ‘faces’ of Fascism: Marcello Piacentini's monumental piazza della Vittoria; Arturo Dazzi's colossal statue ‘L’Era Fascista’, popularly known as the ‘Bigio’; and Oscar Prati's monument-ossuary to the fallen of the Great War.

Understanding Liminality and Intangible Difficult Heritage through Film

ABSTRACT The tourist's role in engaging with difficult heritage is described as a liminal one, in a state of ”limbo” outside of their ordinary lives, embracing the challenging historical narratives presented by difficult heritage while also maintaining a certain detachment. This liminality parallels the cinematic experience, where the audience temporarily resides in a similar state of in-betweenness, delving into imagined traumatic pasts from the safety of the present. This paper contributes both to literature on difficult heritage and to intangible cultural heritage to reveal the need for a more nuanced appreciation of intangible difficulty heritage when concerning genocide and war. It presents the 'Dealing with Trauma through Film' project, with a particular emphasis on its materiality within the context of the German-Namibian conflict and genocide, regarded as difficult heritage. Nelson's concept of liminality plays a pivotal role in understanding the dynamic between the film audience and the experience of the actors involved. The primary focus here is on the production of the German movie 'Der Vermessene Mensch' (The Measures of Men and outlines the intricate representation of intangible aspects of difficult heritage related to conflict through the medium of film.

Voices Heard (Again)

The emigration of Istrian Italians after the Second World War, most often called the “Exodus”, has been a frequent topic of many historical and anthropological studies. This paper reports on new findings based on the EU project Identity on the Line, which studied and interpreted a series of involuntary migrations and unwanted consequences for peoples, communities and individuals in Europe in the middle of the 20th century. In the research of the Istrian “Exodus”, an effort was made to find new testimonies and stories and reach voices that had not been “heard” thus far. In this process, it became obvious that the status and fate of the Istrian Italians who did not emigrate, the so-called “Rimasti” (less studied so far) is very complex due to the ambivalent relationship with the emigrated Istrian Italians (the “Esuli”) as well as with the newly created social environment. Photographs and statements from both communities were collected and meant to be used for two exhibitions, films and publications, thus bringing to light their intimate accounts (some of which were told for the first time), presenting them in a public space. This transformation necessarily implied very careful and sensitive cooperation with the informants, with the aim of making their traumas more visible, as well as establishing museums as institutions where increased efforts are made to communicate “difficult heritage”.