The article is an attempt of critical analysis of the construction of collective memory through museum photographic representations, whereby Bourdieu's theoretical work serves as the starting-point of the analysis. Collective memory is dealt with as a result of representations of the past that circulate in society, while museum is treated as a medium and as a site of memory that offers selective images of the past and thereby shapes memories. In order to disclose the functions and roles that museum photography performs in interpreting the past, the authoress analyses two concrete museum exhibitions that represent the same historical event (the 1920 plebiscite in Carinthia), but from different perspectives; the museum in Libeliče in Slovenia and the one in Völkermarkt/Velikovec in Austria. The authoress ascertains that photography in both museums is crucially involved inthe struggles for the dominant position in the interpretation of this part of the past, because each of these museum exhibitions visually legitimizes specific definition of the past events and also of the still valid national differences. The past is in the museums politicized through visual representations and the history is used for the reproduction of the two contesting state-building discourses - the Slovenian and the Austrian one.
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