Paper short abstract:

Based on field research, my paper revisits the exhibitions in the Women’s Jail on Constitution Hill to examine how the curators position the visitor as a witness to traumatic experiences. What are the possibilities for alternative futures as visitors engage with experiences of racialized violence?

Paper long abstract:

Museums are increasingly envisioning themselves as “democratizing, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures.” These intentions by the International Council of Museums to redesign museums so that they “contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing” need to be linked to the specific efforts of memorial museums where curatorial practices have shifted from ‘authentic’ objects to autobiographical storytelling and multimedia installations in order to educate and emotionally engage the visitor.

Located in the center of Johannesburg, Constitution Hill represents a unique memorial site that, to this day, remains South Africa’s only museum specifically dedicated to the commemoration of women's experiences during apartheid (and beyond). Based on extensive archival and field research, my paper revisits the exhibitions in the former Women’s Jail to examine how the curators position the visitor as an active witness to traumatic experiences and aim to elicit an empathic response with a commitment to social and political change. What, then, are the possibilities for alternative futures emerging from feminist relations of care and empathy as visitors engage with past experiences of racialized violence? How do we need to rethink the ambiguous terms “empathy” and “witness” if harnessed for meaningful societal change and for questioning the visitor’s position as an “implicated subject”?