Context
This knowledge transfer conversation features Olga Zabalueva, Associate Professor in Museology at Umea University with studies in Moscow and a master’s degree from Lund, in dialogue with Oana Nasui, a cultural researcher. Their discussion explores how museum approaches to difficult heritage can inform strategies for contested monuments in public spaces, with particular focus on memory frameworks and museum activism.
Three Modes of Memory: From Antagonism to Agonism
Contemporary museology has converged with memory studies, creating frameworks for understanding how institutions handle difficult heritage. The UNREST research project by Anna Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen, drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy, identifies three distinct modes of memory work that shape how museums and public spaces address contested histories.
Antagonistic memory operates on an “us versus them” paradigm, typical of 19th-century national museums that constructed heritage around homogeneous groups defined in opposition to others—whether marginalized groups within or foreign enemies without. This mode remains very much alive today. Contemporary Russian historical narratives, especially following the invasion of Ukraine, mobilize the concept of “us surrounded by foreign enemies” to consolidate around a particular version of history and heritage. National museums employing this mode narrate one history of one people, often stretching back to the Stone Age despite the anachronism of projecting modern national identities onto ancient peoples.
Cosmopolitan memory emerged after World War II, connecting deeply to notions of human rights and reconciliation after mass atrocities. Rather than “us and them”, this framework operates with “perpetrators and victims”, with visitors expected to feel empathy toward victims. Holocaust commemoration serves as the prime example. While the value of empathy and compassion is clear, this approach has critical limitations: it tends to frame difficult histories as past events requiring acknowledgment and reconciliation, often employing a “never again” framework that doesn’t adequately connect to contemporary crises. Russia’s Gulag Museum exemplifies this—framing camp history as something past requiring acknowledgment, but failing to connect to current political realities. Swedish museums also often operate in this mode, focusing on human rights and victims, yet struggling to explain why, despite extensive education about 20th-century atrocities, similar events continue happening worldwide.
Agonistic memory proposes a radically different approach. Drawing from the Greek word for dispute and argument, it focuses on productive disagreement rather than consensus. Rather than shying away from horrible things in the past or trying to achieve universal agreement, this mode puts everything in context and explores complexity. It asks: Who were the actors beyond just victims and perpetrators? Were there bystanders? Those who remained silent? Enablers or collaborators? Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s work on radical democracy, this approach accepts that disagreement is normal and potentially productive. If democratic dialogue can be maintained instead of fighting, arguments can lead to new modes of knowledge and understanding about difficult issues. The goal is not to deliver answers but to instigate discussions and encourage visitors to ask more questions, ideally leaving with more questions than answers, propelling critical thinking about where we are in the world now and why things happen as they do.
Museum Activism: Transparency Over Neutrality
The concept of museum activism challenges the traditional perception of museums as objective, neutral stages producing scientific knowledge about history and heritage. This notion of museum neutrality has been contested in recent decades, with extensive research demonstrating that museums were never truly neutral—they simply conveyed the grand narratives of states or other powerful actors while claiming apolitical objectivity.
The Museum of Movements project in Malmö, planned as Sweden’s national museum for democracy and migration, illustrates the complexities and contradictions inherent in trying to represent diverse social movements. Based on public dialogues with civil society organizations, the project repeatedly confronted a provocative question: If the museum is about social movements, what if neo-Nazi movements ask to be represented? After all, they are also a social movement, and a museum for democracy should represent every group in society. This hypothetical scenario generated extensive dialogue, but the reality is that such movements would never actually come to this museum because it was conceived as social democratic or left-leaning from the start.
This leads to the core definition of museum activism: it’s not when social movements enter museum space and do something, but when the museum institution itself takes a position, understands it, and is transparent about it. If a museum is not afraid to articulate its stance, where its position is in society, and what values it wants to represent, then it becomes clear how they would approach narrating contested histories. An exhibition about neo-Nazi movements in the Museum of Movements would likely not represent that movement in ways they’d be happy about—and acknowledging this requires accepting that museums are not neutral, not apolitical, but must be very clear about their political leaning, stance, and values.
This transparency can be considered problematic because it challenges the inherent framework that divides knowledge production and arts from politics. Politics is often viewed as something “dirty” or to be frowned upon. Yet we live in a contemporary world where everything is political. Museum activism demands courage—courage that varies dramatically by context. In democratic Sweden, museums might fear reduced funding for taking political stances; in Russia, which is “not very democratic,” the stakes involve potential job loss or imprisonment.
Boundaries of Pluralism and the Challenge of Multiple Narratives
The question of boundaries inevitably arises: Where does pluralism stop? How many narratives should be included? The conversation acknowledges physical constraints—there isn’t room for every type of narrative—but also explores what educational approach should ultimately guide curatorial decisions.
The answer emerging from the agonistic framework is not to seek one narrative that “wins” but to create conditions for ongoing dialogue. Temporary exhibitions can present contradictory viewpoints without delivering any fixed principle, instead putting issues up for discussion. Which exhibition has more truth? Which is more factual? Which represents “the good guy”? These questions themselves become the point, encouraging visitors to recognize their own positionality and biases.
This approach acknowledges internal complexity that mirrors external complexity. Individuals might stand for one principle one day and a conflicting one the next. We may be biased without knowing it, lacking complete information. This acknowledgment of uncertainty and ongoing work contrasts sharply with museums that claim to deliver definitive answers or settled truths. The goal becomes fostering critical thinking and self-reflection rather than transmitting authoritative knowledge.
Contested Monuments: The Colston Case and Contextualization
The Edward Colston statue in Bristol exemplifies how public monuments become flashpoints for memory conflicts. When Black Lives Matter protests sparked globally, protesters toppled this slave trader’s statue and threw it into the harbor. The public authority’s response—to start a conversation, acknowledging there were unspoken words and unaddressed issues—represents a shift from defending the monument to examining why it existed unchallenged for so long.
Collecting ideas through petitions about what to do with the toppled statue, officials considered placing it in a museum with narrative context so people could understand why the statue stood there until something sparked action. This approach doesn’t represent the 19th-century model of claiming certain figures as crucial for national development, but rather a way of contextualizing and examining what commemorations reveal about power, memory, and whose stories get told.
The conversation emphasizes that context can be more important than the actual fact or event. Understanding why a statue was erected, what was happening at that time, and how it fits into broader historical patterns transforms a simple monument into a complex site of inquiry. This contextualization makes heritage more interesting and engaging, sparking curiosity rather than passive acceptance.
Grassroots Commemoration: Power from Below
Grassroots memorial initiatives offer alternative models to top-down commemoration. The Stolpersteine network—small cobblestones with names and dates of Holocaust victims, placed in front of houses where victims were taken from—allows anyone to order these memorials. This scattered, decentralized initiative shows how many people care and want to contribute to remembrance without state or municipal organization, representing genuine community desire to remember.
Russia’s “The Last Address” project mirrored this concept in the 2010s, placing plaques on walls of houses where victims of repression were taken from (since cobblestones are impractical with snow). However, this grassroots initiative became a point of contestation: as authoritarianism grew, statist activists began tearing down plaques, claiming the history was false, denying repressions occurred, or justifying Stalin’s actions. This illustrates how grassroots memory work can challenge state narratives and face active resistance.
The fundamental difference between organic, community-driven commemoration and top-down approaches where institutions approach communities saying “we want to represent you, let’s participate in workshops” represents profoundly different power dynamics and authenticity. When people come together wanting to be represented versus being invited to participate in someone else’s project, the resulting memory work has entirely different character and legitimacy.
Practical Approaches: Recontextualization Over New Construction
Rather than building new monuments, the conversation proposes that public spaces are wide enough without adding more. Instead, recontextualizing existing monuments through counter-installations, added context, or information about when monuments were erected and what was happening at that time offers more productive engagement with heritage.
The Louis de Geer statue in Norrköping serves as example—a founder of Swedish industries but also complicit in the transatlantic slave trade. Most people walk past thinking “another old man in the middle of the city, why care?” Adding information about his involvement in slavery sparks curiosity: Did Sweden actually have colonies? Yes, it did, and was involved in various colonial enterprises. This contextualization transforms passive monuments into active sites of learning and questioning.
Commissioning processes involve two sides: administrative and bureaucratic (involving power relations where someone orders someone else to create commemoration with particular agendas) and grassroots counterparts (communities coming together to ask municipalities for commemoration or working on community/individual basis). The most productive work often comes from the latter, where communities themselves identify the need to remember something rather than being represented by others.
Education and Critical Heritage Literacy
Beyond curatorial and planning strategies, the conversation emphasizes that we need to know more about heritage and learn to perceive it critically. Understanding the monuments we already have and those we want to erect requires education—not just for museum professionals but for the broader public who encounter heritage in daily life. This critical heritage literacy enables people to ask better questions about why certain things are commemorated, whose perspectives are centered, and what connections exist between past and present.
The personalized monument examples like Stolpersteine address fundamental questions about public space ownership. If a memorial is in front of your house, it occupies an interesting liminal space—almost private yet visible from the street. This challenges conventional categories of public and private space, suggesting that commemoration works differently at different scales and through different relationships to place.
The Shared Difficult Heritage of Northeast Europe
The conversation acknowledges “the difficult heritage that we unfortunately share”—the complex legacies of authoritarianism, repression, and violence that connect Eastern and Northern European experiences. This northeast connection brings particular depth to discussions about national museums and contested heritage, as someone with experience in both Russian and Swedish contexts can identify patterns that transcend national boundaries while remaining attentive to crucial contextual differences.
Throughout the conversation, both participants demonstrate deep awareness that there are no simple answers to questions about public memory, contested heritage, and commemoration. What emerges instead is a sophisticated framework for thinking through these challenges: embracing complexity, maintaining transparency about institutional positions, creating space for productive disagreement, contextualizing rather than removing or adding monuments, supporting grassroots commemoration, and always connecting past to present rather than treating difficult histories as safely concluded chapters. The agonistic approach doesn’t resolve tensions but rather creates conditions for ongoing, productive engagement with the difficult questions heritage raises.
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Knowledge transfer discussion, within the project ”Nordic Insights: addressing cancel culture in public spaces through artistic dialogue and cultural innovation”. More about the project here
The “Nordic Insights: addressing cancel culture in public spaces through artistic dialogue and cultural innovation” project is implemented by the Formare Culturala platform from Romania. It is funded by the Nordic Culture Fund through the Globus Opstart+ program.
