Revisiting the Property Room: A Humanist Perspective on Doing Justice and Telling Stories

Abstract

This essay offers vision of the potential of evidentiary objects to do justice to the suffering of so many whose traumatic stories of violence might not otherwise be told. The telling of these stories, the making public, the sharing, is a part of what it means to do the work of justice. It makes the bearing of such legacies less lonely. I make this intervention by speaking to a wide audience. I hope to reach both law enforcement professionals as well as scholars who might help facilitate such enactments. They essay includes a close reading of a literary text, a first person narrative, and the work on police property room professionals and conservators at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.