I really appreciated tonight's readings because I think they dealt with the social versus the theoretical aspects of anthropology and ethnography. I've had a long standing battle with trying to reconcile the two, but I rarely feel like I have the authority to claim one or the other. Like Amber often reiterates it's easy to accuse all meaning as being socially constructed, thus making the anthropologists job obsolete. However in the Gimblett piece she helps distinguish this idea that objects are "...by virtue of the manner in which they have been detached for disciplines make their objects and in the process make themselves." (387) My interpretation of this quote is that by categorizing an artifact you are not necessarily giving meaning to the object but you are placing a meaning to it within a context to yourself. I think this is a major principal in the social
sciences that's forgotten by public interpretation. Gimblett claims that this process of forgetting by the public is due partly by the "spectacle of the installation" (390). She goes on to explain that this spectacle represents objects as art rather then cultural objects. This is followed with a history of how museums began labeling objects, and the innate responsibility and power this gives to the museum. I really loved the part where she discusses how the public trusts information. She explains that the time and evidence collected by the ethnographer is kind of like collateral for public value.
The most vital part of this piece though was the part about actor vs animal. I found this really interesting because I had read about this idea of acting and culture before in other anthropology classes in context with cultural memory. If I can remember correctly Maurice Halbwach’s has a theory on types of memory: personal, cognitive, and habit . Specifically habit, is linked to ideas of performance and ritual. What separates the idea of performance from individualistic memory, is that performance is not a reflection of something, but rather a direct composition of it. In essence the performance of the living is a direct three-dimensional manifestation of that particular memory. I guess where I'm going with this is that the museum is trying to navigate a cultural memory with in a historical context. However, in some ways this is contradictory because the cultural memory must exceed the bounds of historical ideology.
So this post is totally convoluted and thick with strange analysis, but this reading really got my brain going in like 20 different directions.
I can definitely relate on feeling a little scatter brained while reading. I felt a bit like a little kid because I really was evoked with a sense of wonder- my reflection will serve as an example:
ReplyDeleteComing from an Art History foundation the labeling of objects really stuck with me and made me really very curious how the documentation of names has been maintained for so long. I always assumed there to be a combination of word of mouth and a general physical catalogues of objects? Perhaps divided by species; but really I have no idea. This also led me to wonder if a type species would just be documented or as many forms as known and is the hypothetical catalog continually updated with evolved animals. I guess it could be fair to call the museum a physical catalog. In a similar vein, I also wondered which society created museum culture, and to get even more specific where natural science was first formally studied. These are all things I always kind of assumed there was a general fairness to guessing and approximations, I could make an educated guess, but really I have no idea.
In both of the articles for this week, there is a commonality of the purpose of collecting and display, and the decision on how to categorize not only the items but the purpose behind them. In his article The European Appropriation of Indigenous Things in Chapter 4 of his book Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific, Nicholas Thomas highlights the fact that more important than objects themselves is the question of why they were collected, and for what purpose. Thomas points out the transient nature of the collections, and the tension that exists between the ‘scientifically controlled interest in further knowledge’ (in situ) versus the curiosity (in context) that comes from having something unique. He discusses the social and historical practice of gift giving, and the ‘entanglement’ or confusion/complication stemming from the value of the object and the hierarchy it assumes in the importance of local cultural, political and exchange systems of the society it is part of. He argues that the complexities of collections as well as how they are viewed (entanglements) contribute substantively to defining a society. His effort to define an object as a piece of history or a piece of art, and the ensuing emotions that are attached to the objects personal history (which can change over time) clearly point out the multitude of views on how objects are categorized.
ReplyDeleteIn her article, Objects of Ethnography, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett focuses mainly on the differences between in situ and in context – defining the slippery slope an object travels down on the road from historical object through curiosity to piece of art. In her view, the ability of an object to hold up when stripped of any contingencies any external artifacts, so to speak, is not only the definition of ‘art’ but the way that the object speaks to the audience. It is the way the object tells its story to museum goes. In this definition, it is necessary for an object to be viewed in context, rather than in situ since the whole story of the culture can only be told when objects inter-relate. Exhibiting the ‘living conditions’ provides a better sense of the total culture; to me as a viewer; all of the objects on display, the poses the theoretical interaction between people (living or dead) and objects bring the pieces of the story today. They tell the ‘business of daily life’ in the culture and give the viewer as complete a picture as possible of the culture. The ‘turn of the head’ approach in which the audience can view the culture on display and compare and contrast with their own every day world is an extremely interesting concept, and one that needs to be explored as we visit museums and compare and contrast the cultural displays we view with our own 21st century world.
Having read Thomas' piece second, I was fascinated by the curiosity versus "scientific specimens" debate. The idea that perception and how objects are analyzed can alter their definition and purpose. This worked with Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's writing on the Museum Effect and how the placement of objects can transform them. Placing an object, such as a basket, in a museum can assign it scientific and anthropological importance, while placing that same basket in your living room would make it a curiosity or trophy.
ReplyDeleteThese readings also made me question the relevance of what is in a museum, since we have categorized everything within it s having greater meaning than they do/did to the culture to which they belong. How is it that we feel compelled to study and analyze "strangeness?" Our curiosity of other cultures is derived from a insatiable thirst for what is exotic, strange, or "other." And how does this thirst contribute to "ritual degenerating into spectacle," (Gimblett. pg. 428) whether that ritual be dances, festivals, or everyday actions? And how does this degeneration apply to objects from other cultures?
(If my posts don't make sense, please let me know. I tend to ramble and drivel when I am not given a prompt. Sorry.)