REMEMBERING THE FUTURE. MUSEUMS OF MEMORY AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES

Identities, both individual and collective, are deeply affected by the memory of their own past, and by the complex dynamics of the interaction between remembering and forgetting. Given this background, particular relevance is displayed by so-called 'places of memory' -museums, memorials, mausoleums and so on-devoted to memory of the past. This paper aims to show how such places, which externalize in space the time line of a past history, are topical places, crucial for the constitution of collective identities and their projection into the future, and how their study is an essential component in a semiotics of cultural identity. In particular we shall examine in detail three such places which appear particularly meaningful for the relationship between memory and identity: Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the Park for Peace, Villa Grimaldi in Santiago, Chile; and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, at Nanjing, Cina.