Emotions and critical thinking at a dark heritage site: investigating visitors’ reactions to a First World War museum in Slovenia

Abstract

This paper explores the connection between memory study theories (antagonistic, cosmopolitan, and agonistic) and emotions in a dark heritage site. It does so by investigating Italian and Slovene visitors' emotional reactions to the permanent exhibition of the Kobarid Museum. The museum is located in a dark heritage site in Slovenia that was the epicenter of a series of bloody conflicts during the First World War. Relying on a cosmopolitan narrative, the museum promotes a clear antiwar message, aiming to elicit emotional responses such as empathy and compassion for the victims to connect with visitors. However, our analysis brings to light antagonistic emotions among Italian and Slovene visitors, raising important issues concerning the role of emotions and multiperspectivity in dark heritage sites. Hence, we discuss how these emotions could instead promote critical thinking, self-reflection, and crossnational dialogue.

The Mediating Role of Satisfaction between Emotional Values, Social Values, and Behavioral Intentions of Muslim Students

“…Visitors perceive a multitude of experiences that enrich their souls with greater understanding and sensitivity to spiritual values, which is called "emotional value" (Management & Som, 2023). This is in line with research results (Cheng et al, 2021;Antón et al, 2018b;Bull & Angeli, 2020), which state that emotional value influences satisfaction. However, emotional value does not have a significant effect on behavior towards purchasing halal food (Firdaus et al, 2023) in the Indonesian sample group.…”

“…Emotional value of visitors occurs because of something that is felt, namely the feeling of positive emotions obtained from visiting tourist places. This is a pleasure and emotional satisfaction obtained by users while enjoying the visit (Antón et al, 2018b;Bull & Angeli, 2020).…”

Las dimensiones emocional y creativa en la educación patrimonial desde el ámbito de las CCSS. Evaluación de programas

“…WOS nos reporta 24 artículos y Scopus 37, de los cuales 15 de ellos forman parte de ambos listados. Buena parte de los resultados presentan una temática investigadora que se circunscribe al ámbito del turismo presentando conclusiones sobre el papel de las emociones en las experiencias patrimoniales (Su, Hsu, 2013), (Ndlovu, 2015), (Benetti, Ozelame, Pereira y Tricarico, 2018), (Dominguez-Quintero, González-Rodriguez y Roldan, 2019), (Zhao, Wang y Ji, 2020), (Zheng, Liang y Ritchie, 2020), (Bull y De Angeli, 2020), (Hoare, 2020), (Oren, Shani y Polonia, 2021). Encontramos un artículo interesante de la mano de De Leersnyder, Kim y Mesquita (2020), donde se investiga sobre la pervivencia de la cultura de origen de los emigrantes en el país de acogida.…”