Museum pedagogy and the evocation of moments of responsibility

Abstract

In 2010–11, an exhibition entitled It’s not Your Fault! was on display at The Women’s Museum in Denmark. The museum aimed to contribute to the prevention of rape by giving young people, who were the target group, a sense of shared responsibility for the prevention of rape. In this article, the museum’s hopes regarding the prevention of rape are read as a hope of deepening of responsibility. The exhibition is approached as a conglomerate of didactic materials and contents that may encourage visitors to engage in educational relations with the museum regarding traumatic events of sexual violence. The potential of the design and dramaturgy of the exhibition to evoke moments of ethical responsibility is explored. Inspired by Emmanuel Lévinas, the article discusses the joint emergence of learning and responsibility, and approaches ethical responsibility in the double sense of response and care. This particular point in grounding ethics in education is discussed in relation to central features of the exhibition. It is suggested that such features, like the poetic re-interpretations in the exhibition, have the potential of meeting and unsettling the visitor and lay the grounds for ethical responsibility and for critical re-thinking. However, it is also discussed how the exhibition represents controversial issues in regard to displaying the subject.

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