Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq

We have long saved--and curated--objects from wars to commemorate the war experience. These objects appear at national museums and memorials and are often mentioned in war novels and memoirs. Through them we institutionalize narratives and memories of national identity, as well as international power and purpose. While people interpret war in different ways, and there is no ultimate authority on the experiences of any war, curators of war objects make different choices about what to display or write about, none of which are entirely problematic, good, or accurate. This book asks whose vantage points on war are made available, and where, for public consumption; it also questions whose war experiences are not represented, are minimized, or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. Christine Sylvester looks at four sites of war memory-the National Museum of American History, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and selected novels and memoirs of the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq-to consider the way war knowledge is embedded in differing sites of memory and display. While the museum shows war aircraft and a laptop computer used by a journalist covering the American war in Iraq, visitors to the Vietnam Memorial or Arlington Cemetery find more prosaic and civilian items on view, such as baby pictures, slices of birthday cake, or even car keys. In addition, memoirs and novels of these wars tend to curate ghastly horrors of wars as experienced by soldiers or civilians. For Sylvester, these sites of war memory and curation provide ways to understand dispersed war authority and interpretation and to consider which sites invite viewers to revere a war and which reflect personal experiences that show the undersides of these wars. Sylvester shows that scholars, policymakers, and other citizens need to consider different types of situated memory and knowledge in order to fully grasp war, rather than idealize it. "Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq is about looking for war knowledge in unexpected places, such as war memorials, museum exhibitions, war cemeteries, and novels and memoirs. What one finds there can contradict the prescribed understandings of a particular war or, say, endorse the tendency to treat military personnel as heroes to be thanked. Especially when 'ordinary curators' display memories of their war experiences through the objects left at memorials and graves, or through the words they curate in war novels, the observer/reader gets a glimpse of actual lives lost, futures cut short and even some of the dull noncombat jobs military do in war zones. The main point is that war is a social institution and its experiences are plentiful and decentralized. Many scholars and other interested readers look for war in the decisions and movements of militaries and states, but this book's difference is that it focuses on how a variety of formal and informal war curators present the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq at a moment of American militarism"-- Provided by publisher Who is an authority on the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq? The Pentagon? Leading politicians? Allies? Academic specialists? The media? American soldiers? Vietnamese and Iraqis? Protesters? Families of war dead? Curators of war exhibitions? War novelists? This book considers locations of war knowledge that are often overlooked by scholars in the social sciences and also by civilians who have an interest in understanding these wars. It takes readers to a permanent exhibition of war at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its traveling facsimile, to Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery where military killed in Iraq are buried, and to well-regarded novels and memoirs about these wars. Across vastly different sites of war knowledge, the book considers whose war appears where, how it is curated, and whether some sites re-curate commonplace understandings of these wars by highlighting experiences war experts can neglect. Christine Sylvester's book considers locations of war knowledge that are often overlooked by scholars in the social sciences and also by civilians who have an interest in understanding these wars. She takes readers to the permanent exhibition of war at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its traveling facsimile, to Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery where military killed in Iraq are buried, and to well-regarded novels and memoirs about these wars. Across vastly different sites of war knowledge, Sylvester considers whose war appears where, how it is curated, and whether some sites re-curate commonplace understandings of these wars by highlighting experiences war experts can neglect Cover 1 Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments and Preface 8 Introduction: Whose Wars Are on View? 14 Part I 32 1 America’s Wars in Vietnam and Iraq 34 2 Museums, Memorials, and Novels as Sites of War Knowledge 62 Part II 88 3 The Smithsonian Curates America’s Wars in Vietnam and Iraq 90 4 The American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq at a Memorial, Cemetery, and a Traveling Tribute to Veterans 119 5 Bodies of War Curate the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq 156 6 Remembering, Forgetting, Curating, and Re-​Curating War 186 Appendix 200 Notes 202 References 214 Index 228 We have long saved--and curated--objects from wars to commemorate the war experience. These objects appear at national museums and memorials and in war novels and memoirs. Through them we institutionalize narratives and memories of national identity, power and purpose. This book asks whose vantage points on the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq are available, and where, for public consumption; it also considers whose war experiences are not represented, are minimized, or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. In looking at how professional curators, ordinary civilian curator