In my presentation I would like to take a closer look on current narrations delivered by the Polish historical museums (the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk and the Warsaw Uprising Museum) and examine how their inclusiveness or exclusiveness of storytelling changes the visitor's perspective on 20th century history. I understand inclusiveness after Sharon Macdonald as including the hybrid, open or transcultural narration of the past whereas exclusiveness supports unilateral view on the history.
The new angle I am proposing here comes from application of findings developed within social psychology, less commonly implemented into critical studies on museum narratives. Studies on collective (Bar-Tal et al., 2009) and competitive victimhood (Noor et al., 2012) give a new scientific perspective into the subject since they deal with the collective memory and identity in the view of previous intergroups conflicts (Noor et al., 2017) and prove that consequences of collective victimhood could influence relations with an adversary group either destructively or positively.
My interpretation will be based on the study conducted in Poland (2020) as a part of my master thesis. The psychological survey on collective victimhood and its impact on inclusive/exclusive museums' narrations, I carried out online on the representative group of Polish citizens, provides – I would claim – clues about how the institutional way of remembering the past can be adapted in order to make it more inclusive.
