ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of the war trophy in relation to two exhibits at the Canadian War Museum: a black Mercedes-Benz bulletproof limousine that was once used by Hitler as a parade car and Gertrude Kearns' painting Somalia Without Conscience. It examines free association as a method of cultural analysis that can attend to the affective force of the social encounter. The chapter explains a fictive exhibit that brings the car into conversation with the painting and considers how the embodied subjects of war are constructed in the presence of memorial space. It focuses on how visitor responses to the car and the painting open new questions with regard to the mandate of the museum to remember, to preserve and to educate. The chapter suggests an imaginary exhibit that brings the car into juxtaposition with the painting. The painting provokes many questions but ultimately the responsibility for answers lies with the viewer.
