Beyond the memory imperative? The politics of victimhood in Srebrenica’s The failure of the International Community

This article examines the politics of victimhood in the Srebrenica Memorial Centre’s permanent exhibition, The failure of the International Community, a joint venture with the Dutch organisations PAX and Memorial Centre Camp Westerbork. Departing from the exhibition’s curation process and its sociopolitical dimensions, this article questions how the exhibition’s textual and visual narratives are shaped by social and political discourses of victimhood, perpetratorship and implication. This article demonstrates how the exhibition draws on dominant narrative templates and tropes derived from the ‘memory imperative.’ This template shapes representations of Bosniak victimhood along gendered binaries, while keeping perpetratorship at a distance through discursive and visual means. The exhibition’s focus on international, and specifically Dutch, actors constructs a narrative of progress and redemption focused on Dutch atonement. By highlighting the memory imperative’s narrative shaping of the exhibition, this article contributes to discussions on power imbalances in transnational memory work, demonstrating how the use of global memorial forms may eclipse local complexities of violence and survivor agency in favour of international atonement.