Tracking discourses of occupation and genocide in Lithuanian museums and sites of memory : disertacija
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Tamsus turizmas; Diskurso analizė; Muziejai ir paveldas; Post-struktūralizmas; Genocidas; Turizmas; Viešoji kultūra; Dark tourism;; Thanatourism;; Discourse analysis;; Foucault;; Foucauldian;; Museums and heritage;; Post-structuralism;; Lithuania;; Genocide.
ENTourism visits to sites associated to varying degrees with death and dying have for some time inspired academic debate and research into what has come to be popularly described as ‘dark tourism’. Research to date has been based on the mobilisation of various social scientific methodologies to understand issues such as the motivations of visitors to consume dark tourism experiences and visitor interpretations of the various narratives that are part of the consumption experience. This thesis offers an alternative conceptual perspective for carrying out research into museums that represent genocide and occupation by presenting a discourse analysis of five Lithuanian museums which share this overchig theme using Foucault’s concept of ‘discursive formation’ from ‘Archaeology of Knowledge’. A constructivist methodology is therefore applied to locate the rhetorical representations of Lithuanian and Jewish subject positions and to identify the objects of discourse that are produced in five museums that interpret an historical era defined by occupation, the persecution of people and genocide. The discourses and consequent cultural function of these museums is examined and the key finding of the research proposes that they authorise a particular Lithuanian individualism which marginalises the Jewish subject position and its related objects of discourse into abstraction. [From the publication]
