The Regime of Memory in “The Museum of Innocence”: The Past as an Age of Innocence

In this paper, the regime of memory produced in The Museum of Innocence, a museum created and curated by the author Orhan Pamuk is discussed. The museum was opened in 2012 in Istanbul and it was based on Pamuk’s novel of the same title published in 2008. The intertextual novel -museum and the museum-novel blur the distinctions between fiction and reality, as well as the distinctions between individual and social memories and focus on everyday life and personal objects rather than the “monumental” national history. The regime of memory produced in this museum is discussed in this paper in relation with the process of modernization in Turkey. The understanding of time, space, reality and individual prevailing in the museum are evaluated in order to understand whether the museum produces a creative remembering that problematized the process of remembering or a regime of remembering that is based on absolutizing the past.