29750

Gendered Memories and Resistance: Engaging Women's Quest for Justice through the Museum der Trostfrauen

Rosa Cordillera Castillo

Kommentar

Memory and memory-making practices play a role in framing the reading of present and future situations, in articulating and legitimating moral and political discourses, and in structuring action in contexts of crisis, conflict, and peace. Memory is also significant in the formation of identity and production of subjectivities, in mediating social relationships, in forging a sense of belonging as well as producing exclusions. Linked to an individual and group’s access to power, resources, and justice, memory can be contested, where the meanings, values, and portrayals of the past/s are subjected to competing definitions, interpretations, selection, and appropriations in the present. This is especially so since material, socio-cultural, and political conditions impact which group’s memory is privileged, institutionalized, and authorized over others, and which memory gets forgotten or silenced. Crucial in this dynamics and politics of memory is the ways in which gender and heteropatriarchy shape memory and memory-making practices and vice versa, especially in relation to violence. This seminar delves into this theme by centring gendered memories of violence and gendered forms of resistance through memory-work. We will discuss key texts and films on this topic and partner with the Berlin-based Museum der Trostfrauen (Museum of Comfort Women) to conduct engaged research that will culminate in a publicly-oriented event or intervention. Abbreviated as MuT (German for courage), the museum is a project of the AG Trostfrauen of the human rights organization Korea Verband, with working group members from Germany, Japan, Korea, Congo, the Philippines and other countries. Through multimedia installations and life stories, MuT documents and memorializes the experiences of "comfort women" who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military during World II and how they broke the silence and fought for justice. "An interactive place of learning and remembrance designed for both young people and adults" (https://trostfrauen.museum/en/), MuT not only provides information on the "comfort women" system and the women who were enslaved in it, but also critically addresses the continuities of sexual violence in other contexts such as Wehrmacht - and Konzentrationcamp-Brothels, South Korean soldiers in the Vietnam War, and the history of Yazidis. Schließen

Zusätzliche Termine

Do, 17.04.2025 10:00 - 12:00