Controlling for consensus: Commemorating apartheid in South Africa

According to the literature, commemorations of difficult pasts can be categorized into two main types, fragmented and multivocal - both of which serve to express, if not to enhance, social conflicts. Our analysis of the first apartheid museum in South Africa, however, points to a commemorative type that aims at agreement, not through disagreement and debate but through overarching consensus. That consensus is constructed through a large degree of control in terms of the form and content of the mnemonic object. Having outlined the techniques used to control for consensus, we briefly explore the social context of the commemorating society, which informed and enabled such a mnemonic construction.