murder, museums, and memory holes: comparing cold war public
TRANSCRIPT
Murder, Museums, and Memory Holes: Comparing Cold War Public History in
Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City
Michael G. Vann
California State University, Sacramento
Center for Khmer Studies Fellow, 2013
Fulbright Senior Scholar, Indonesia, 2012-2013
Parallel Cold War Museums/Monuments: Competing Narratives of Cold War Violence
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Jakarta
Communist Vietnam (1975- ) New Order Indonesia (1966-1998)
Methodology
• Comparative World History
– Reliance on secondary sources
– Comparative global context
• Geertzian thick description of sites
• Study the official message but also the silences
Compare • Names
• Display, artifacts, and other content
• Role in state ideologies and mythologies of the Cold War
• Victimization
• Gendering the Cold War
• Conditions, funding, and visitors
• Relationship to regime change/stability
• Silences: George Orwell’s “memory holes”
• Futures?
Names
• Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes (Nhà trưng bày tội ác Mỹ-ngụy), 1975-1990
• Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression (Nhà trưng bày tội ác chiến tranh xâm lược), 1990-1995
• The War Remnants Museum, 1995-present
• Lubang Buaya
• Halim Air Force Base
• Kompleks Monumen Pahlawan Revolusi
• Monumen Pancasila Sakti, 1969
• Museum Paseban, 1981
• Museum Pengkhianatan PKI, 1992
Museum Displays
• Discourses of Violence and Victimization
• Central to state ideologies
• Permanent in Jakarta but changeable in Ho Chi Minh City
Torture myths
• Museum
• Newspaper stories
• Rumors
• G 30 S-PKI film
– 3 ½ hours
– October 1st on TV
– School children
New Order’s narrative structure
• General Suharto assumes power to save Indonesia from PKI threat
• PKI threat is the raison d’être of the New Order
Personalize the victims
Only the generals, lower officers, and Nasution’s daughter Ade
Not the:
500,000-1,000,000 dead
Millions of TAPOL
Gendering the Cold War
• Competing images of women
• Same view of Communist women?
• What was the reality for women?
New Messages in
Ho Chi Minh City
• New policies – Đổi Mới
– Market-Leninism
• New visitors
• New money
• Peace park?