Museums as actors of agonistic peace? Dealing with racist legacies in Switzerland
Résumé
There is a gap between memory studies dealing with post-war memory in post-conflict contexts and the recent debate about legacies of the colonial (and slavery) past and its heritage in public space. These debates have become particular acute during the worldwide mobilisations of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd, in relation to police violence. I seek to bring the two together, approaching colonialism and slavery as particular forms of historic violence and conflict, extending peace and conflict literature to non-war contexts. Similarly to post-conflict cities, non-war cities are also traversed by ethno-racial-national tensions and marked by spatial segregation, albeit not to the same extent. In the context of postcolonial debates, Museums search for new roles to fulfil and new stories to tell that break with their historic role in reproducing racism and in glorifying a colonialist past. This is also the case in countries that did not have have colonies, such as Switzerland. This paper presents exploratory research on conflicts in public urban space in Swiss cities and the role museums can play in dealing with these conflicts. Museums are often considered as proper places for contested material heritage, as places where this material can be contextualised. The empirical case I build on is that of the Bern Historic Museum, which is one of the many players in the process of finding a solution to a contested racist painting in a schoolhouse in Bern. Ten years of contestation by anti-racist activist groups culminated in its vandalization. This case is exemplary for the role of public and institutional actors in transforming conflict into agonistic peace. The theoretical framework from which I approach this empirical case draws on peace and conflict studies, urban geography, and post/decolonial theory.