Cristina on Thanotourism
In one of our classes we discussed Pierre Nora’s lieux de memoire, but it was not until reading the Till piece for this week that I could visualize the idea of place serving as a repository for memory, and doing the work of remembering. Through architecture, Berlin is trying to work out the issues of its troubled past in a very public way. One of the arguments I found helpful, was the idea of how hypervisibility can make these issues one dimensional. As the city tries to lay everything out for people to see, it is a performance to prove that they have nothing to hide, but it also makes the unseen more difficult to perceive. The city’s memory sites perform to the world that Germany is repenting for its past, and could never again be capable of the atrocities of the Holocaust. In a way they are like the sites of conscience described in the Sevcenko article, because their very purpose is to connect people to the past in a way that can contribute to the present. Yet in some ways this public performance seems forced, not that it isn’t genuine, but that tourists expect certain things of these sites, to the point that the sites are criticized when for example the Jewish museum doesn’t completely focus on the Holocaust.
Tuol Sleng has also been affected by the expectations of tourists, especially those who have been affected by Holocaust films and museums. I agree, that the Holocaust has codified the way in which genocide and torture is presented, and we carry those expectations when we view exhibits such as Tuol Sleng. Especially in this media rich age, where we carry iconic images with us wherever we go. Tuol Sleng is visited more by tourists, that local Cambodians, and it begs the question, what do we get from visiting such a place? Does it reinforced the mantra of Never again? Is it some kind of twisted entertainment we get from experiencing the suffering of others, or are we really paying homage to the memory of those who died?
I must also ask myself, is the reason I am moved by displays of skulls and hair because of the false experiences I have lived through in movie theaters? The rise in Schindler's List tourism is evidence of the effect of film in converging the real with the performed, and what is left doesn't seem to matter. I am not Jewish, and yet as a minority I feel as if I understand the experiences of discrimination. In the US, they have located one the purposes of the Holocaust museum as promoting tolerance, and thus working for all minority populations; the museum has been redirected to include all of us in this so-called country of immigrants. But since when does the story of the Holocaust belong to me? According to this narrative, we must strive to prevent any discrimination because it may snowball into the extermination of a culture. So because of this we must strive to remember as the distance between the event and the present increases. But I think we must also question the draw of such places to tourists, because I don't think that remembering is the only reason people go to these sites.