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Expressing far reaching conceptions of the museum space, Donald Preziosi (2007:82) describes the museum as:
…an invention, an institution, a technology, indeed an agency of extraordinary power and brilliance. The museum is a theater [sic] of anamorphic and autoscopic dramaturgy; a place in which it is not so easy to tell which is the spider and which the web, which the machinery and which the operator. It is a place at the center of our world, our modernity, in the image of which those worlds continue to proliferate.
Less exultantly than Preziosi, John Wright and Aron Mazel (1991), citing David Meltzer’s (1981) formulation of the museum as Althussarian ideological state apparatus, argue that the museum is a space not ideologically neutral. Nevertheless, such a view is disused for its reductionism while J.B. Thompson’s (1984) articulation of ideology is preferred. In this view ideology is conceived of critically as having to do with “the ways in which meaning (or signification) serves to sustain relations of domination” (1984:4). Grounded in historical processes and constructed as it is by relations of power, ideology is thus a product of political processes rather than a fixed “ready-made structure” (Wright & Mazel, 1991:62). Applying Thompson’s approach to visual symbols of the museum, Wright and Mazel analyse the role played by museum displays in the Natal and KwaZulu areas in the early 1990s (the province of KwaZulu-Natal was formed in 1994) in propagating sustained relations of domination.
The museum for Wright and Mazel is the secular temple where the ‘official’ version of the past is “visually symbolised in a standardised and simplified way in the form of displays intended for popular consumption” (1991:60). That past or ‘history’ is not a set of facts but rather a set of ideas about the past carried in the mind of the historian in the present. These ideas about the past are a product of their society, particularly the conflicts within. Such a constituted past is used by social groups to inform their identity, to identify others (opposing groups) and to justify their policies (collective views). History is thus conceived of as a struggle between dominant and dominated and the museum is a significant purveyor of this history (ibid). By way of Foucault’s observation that “[t]here is no power relation without the relative constitution of a field of knowledge nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute… power relations” (1977:27), Stuart Hall identifies collections (historical or aesthetic) as related to the exercise of power; “the symbolic power to order knowledge, to
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rank, classify and arrange, and thus to give meaning to objects and things through the imposition of interpretive schemas, scholarship and the authority of connoisseurship”
(2005:24). Heritage as a preservation for posterity of things of value is thus shown to be one part of a larger exercise in power.
Wright and Mazel argue that museums are “bastions of ideology” (1987), and state further that the literature on museums and museology offers little attention to the notion that museums “operate to uphold the dominant social order” (1991:76). Over a decade later Philip Gordon (2005) writes that the classic museum, symbol of the Empire, is no longer viable. In the years following Wright and Mazel’s argument it seems that there was indeed a change not only in the focus of the literature but in the practice of museums. The museum as space of imperialist acquisition has purportedly given way to a democratised space in which the construction of knowledge and public education is a primary function. Architecturally, Wildebeest Kuil exhibits a new-museological move toward the modest, contrary to the monumental and palatial reinforcement of the establishment’s authority as evident in older, larger (and more influential) museums. Of course it would be erroneous to accept the philosophical shift of new museology as definitive of a total shift in praxis and transformation in perceptions of museum staff and visitors and their conceptions of the space.
In 1994, Nomvuso Tembe, then public relations officer at the National Cultural History Museum in Pretoria noted that “[r]esearch has shown that many African people don’t visit museums because they don’t feel part of them. They don’t think that museums preserve their past” (cited in Coombes, 2004:166). A further challenge is a concern that in many instances of museum preservation the indigenous perspective is a bleak and scathing one, at times felt as “tantamount to keeping a brain-dead body artificially alive on a life-support system;
tantamount to freezing the corpse; tantamount to placing one’s dead grandmother’s body on a permanent exhibition” (Mané-Wheoki 1992, cited in Timothy & Nyaupane 2009b:26). In November 1994, the conference Museums and the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) held at the Willem Prinsloo Agricultural Museum outside Pretoria became one of the first post-democratic election forums dialoguing about the significance of museums in the new dispensation. The proposed objectives were described in a document entitled “Revitalising the Nation’s Heritage” (Küsel, De Jong, Van Coller et al. 1994) which highlighted that museums were to incorporate the key principles of the government’s
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Reconstruction and Development Programme. The principal mission of museums, as laid out in the document is to “aid in the protection and sustainable utilisation of our country’s natural and cultural heritage” (cited in Coombes, 2004:160–161). The argument was in favour of a holistic, ecologically-minded museum practice. From such a perspective community pride and individual and social empowerment could be made manifest in the process of accessing and utilising community knowledge and history within a museum space. In this way heritage becomes a resource for social cohesion on a local level.
The museum space is increasingly viewed as a venue for building social capital. Social capital is a term which refers to “social connections or networks that have an innate value, not necessarily a monetary value but some kind of shared esteem for humankind” (Timothy, 2011:327). Social capital is produced when “educational facilities are created for locals, civic pride is enhanced and standards of living improved” (ibid). Manifestations of social capital are: social cohesion, community support for a cause, and personal investment in a community. Museums are best able to work as crucibles for social capital when they are embedded in local communities (ibid). The Australian Museum is an example of an institution involved in processes of democratisation and participation with indigenous communities in the preservation and interpretation of their cultural materials (Gordon, 2005).
This was begun through two major implementations: i) the employment of Aboriginal people within museums; and ii) assisting communities in the establishment of ‘keeping places’/community museums. Keeping places (or community museums) constitute sites/museums “where Aboriginal communities can hold onto artefacts created by their ancestors and a place where their contemporary cultural practices can be displayed”
(www.oranaarts.com). The priority has turned from tourist to community-orientated development. This foregrounded the importance of dialogue with Aboriginal peoples pertaining to the representation of their cultural materials, where they were to be represented and what were in the museum archives and catalogues. In this the museum has had to turn away from classic museology’s “basic premise of the sanctity and primacy of the object (something deep in Western culture)” (2005:359).
Gordon maintains that community museums/keeping places developed in unique response to the desires and needs of each community (with a comprehensible community mandate) are more likely to be useful to the community and therefore successful (2005:359). Gordon,
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however, does not describe what is meant by ‘success’ nor does he discuss if these sites are meant for visitors/tourists or mainly as places for the community. He does note, however, that one of the reasons communities may desire to have a museum of their own is for the promotion of local employment. Another reason is for the protection of a marginalised culture from being assimilated or quashed by the prevailing dominant culture. While describing these as legitimate desires and stating that museum professionals are to work together with the community toward solutions that meet the community’s wishes, Gordon concedes that “[t]his is not always an easy task” (2005:364).
According to Andrew Newman (2005) the contribution of museums and galleries to individuals and the broader community is couched in identity. This is potentially significant as “[a] stronger sense of self might foster personal or community development and could be a precursor to inclusion, although more research is needed” (2005:331). Inclusion and exclusion are points of great contention in the South African context where the creation of a
‘new’ South Africa has been immeasurably complicated by internalised “prejudices and discriminations encouraged and enacted under apartheid” which in turn has had an impact on the degree to which cooperation is possible between different constituencies (Coombes, 2004:3). The above necessitates examination in order to appreciate the weighted considerations “in the struggle for historical memory and public history in South Africa”
(ibid). Efforts to broaden participation at all levels in the public heritage sector will always come up against these fissures. Apartheid and colonialism have contributed to certain forms of community and artificially constituted homogeneous ethnic constituencies (2004:4).
Despite local awareness of this “the single most frequently used justification for much government expenditure in the public heritage sector is a much vaunted recourse to an ideal of ‘community’” (ibid):
The ideal of ‘community’ on these occasions is not necessarily the same for those in whose name and interests it is invoked. Paradoxically, exclusion is therefore, to a certain extent, part of the logic of the way ‘community’ is often mobilized in official rhetoric. Similarly, because it is a concept that is seen to provide leverage in official circles, it can precipitate problematic essentializing gestures as a means of authenticating a claim to ‘community’. (Coombes, 2004:4)
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During South Africa’s transition to democracy, the concept of ‘community’ was used in official rhetoric as part of a strategy of national unification. At the same time, the question of citizenship and belonging was hotly debated in the press. Almost two decades have passed and these conflicting dialogues of community and belonging are still at play in public discourse. Events in recent years speak to the unremitting tension at grassroots level. In 2008 xenophobic attacks broke out across the country (Mail & Guardian, 31 May 2008:np). The violence escalated as thousands protested against what they believed were job losses due to foreign infiltration. Africans from neighbouring countries had entered the country and set up shops and taken other employment. The extreme violence against these immigrants and refugees was a sharp irony considering that many African countries had banded together in support of oppressed South Africans during apartheid. Moreover, African migrant labour was a cornerstone of the South African economy since the discovery of diamonds and gold. In addition to increased xenophobia, conflicts between groups within the country have grown in the last decade.36 The construct of community is thus shown to be temporal and ethereal at its best. Moreover, while the national identity may be publically re-articulated, on-the-ground perceptions take much longer to change if at all (Davison, 2005). This is certainly true within a fractured South African society, where tenuous race relations exist under the mantle of
‘unity in diversity’.
The official rhetoric of Mandela and Mbeki in their respective presidencies utilised a language of decolonisation that sought to subvert the apartheid use of ethnicity towards subjugation. The Rainbow Nation was described by Mandela and Mbeki after him as strengthened by its diversity; ethnicity in terms of the ‘new’ South Africa was thus to be celebrated (cf. Herwitz, 2012; Barnard, 2003). While officially claiming inclusivity for all South Africans, such rhetoric did lend itself “to a more fundamentalist ethnic absolutism”
(Coombes, 2004:3). Controversial journalist, Max du Preez (1999), sparked a media row, and came under fire following an article in which he warned against reconstructing the racial categories of apartheid, arguing that both presidents’ reference to ‘whites, coloureds, Indians and Africans’ “implies absolutely that whites, coloureds and Indians can’t be Africans” (cited
36 These conflicts are often fuelled by political differences and ethnic hostilities such as the ongoing antagonism between Zulu and Xhosa in the KwaZulu-Natal Province which is inseparable from antagonism between the African National Congress and the InkathaFreedom Party.
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in Coombes, 2004:2).37 What followed in the press was a series of scathing responses concerning who had the right to call themselves ‘African’ (cf. Coombes, 2004).
Divisions of the 1990s were counterpoised to a re-presentation of San peoples in South Africa in which they were constructed in the media as a site of cultural recuperation (Tomaselli, 1995) and in such a way as to de-centre and negotiate contending nationalisms (Blundell 1998; Masilela 1987). San peoples were heralded as the ‘First People’,38 a link to the Country’s common past and therefore a way in which to transcend its present divisions.
Positioning the San as the First People was part of an attempt to redefine South Africa’s national history. Through the San all South Africans were to find inclusion and through this sense of belonging citizens were to work toward social cohesion and the betterment of the country. The above is an example of social capital re-constructed on a national scale. The creation of national heritage is thus shown to be a discursive practice:
It is one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory. Just as individuals and families construct their identities by ‘storying’
the various random incidents and contingent turning points of their lives into a single, coherent, narrative, so nations construct identities by selectively binding their chosen high points and memorable achievements into an unfolding ‘national story’. (Hall, 2005:25)
The single national heritage narrative described by Hall is seldom wholly agreed upon by all citizens. Certainly, competing nationalisms and divisions persist. Recognising this, what Hall (2005) and others suggest is a discursive practice (note the Foucouldian influence), a heritage conversation (Herwitz, 2012), or what is otherwise described as an attempt in heritage presentation toward multivocality (cf. Lange, Müller Jansen, Fisher et al. 2013; Morris 2013, 2012; Weiss 2012, 2007; Witz & Rassool 2008). Multivocality is explored at length in Chapter Six and a decolonising multivocality is put forward as a step further in developing reflexive interpretations in progressive heritage-making.
37 Max du Preez, 1999. “I am an African… and Afrikaner” Star, 17 June 1999.
38 For San peoples this concept has become a political tool, much like the term ‘indigenous’ had become for the Australian Aboriginals “precisely because they have successfully managed to redefine the label as a useful political tool for getting more or less recalcitrant white governments to acknowledge their prior claims to land and resources before white settlement and colonization” (Coombes, 2004:207).
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