Sixty years of “peaceful liberation” at the Tibet Museum in Lhasa: triumphant modernization at the rooftop of the world

Drawing on fieldwork and the rhetorical analysis of translations of the descriptive panels displayed in the “Exhibition of the 60th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (EATPL), this article examines the ways in which Lhasa’s Tibet Museum in general and the EATPL in particular represent Tibet’s contested place in the rise of modern China. We analyze the displays to determine how presence, absence, and amnesiatic displays are used to celebrate the success of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leapfrog development, how techniques of contrast produce visions of a so-called “better tomorrow for Tibet,” and how the repetition of before- and after-reform images (re)produce state narratives that showcase the triumph of modernization and the rhetoric of legacy building. By focusing on Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents,” Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Development and Harmonious Society,” and Xi Jinping’s “China Dream,” we show that the rhetoric in these panels is aimed to constrain yearnings for the “Old Tibe...