CHAPTER 6. COLLECTIONS CAPTURED IN TIME
6.7 Reclassifying collections
Classification systems play an important role in understanding the museum structure, the collection as a phenomenon, displays and how material culture and ‘culture groups’ were perceived by museums and how this formed heritage production. A classification is a spatial, temporal or spatio-temporal segmentation of the world. It is a system into which things can be put and where they perform bureaucratic work or knowledge production (Bowker & Leigh Star 2000: 10). Transformation reshaped the classification systems of the collections that led to an expansion of knowledge and an alteration of the meaning of the material culture. Pearce (1992: 85), Bowker and Leigh Star (2000: 11), and Cameron (2004: 65) explain that classification systems are human relationships, the infrastructure of cultural production, and are connected to the culture in which the museum operates. The structure of the collection will tell how museums perceived reality. Pearce (1989: 48) holds that the meaning of objects was upheld through systems that were self-contained and self-maintained. Objects are given meaning through their role in history in providing synchronic meanings.
The earliest collected ethnographic material in the Natal Museum was donated by Whites and incorporated into the numerical classification system as representing either the self or an exotic other. This was a way of ordering and controlling what entered the frame. The Natal Museum divided its collection into archaeology, cultural history and ethnography to articulate order separated from chaos. The division reflected segregation and a polarisation between self and other, past and present. It upheld a segregated relationship between ‘cultural groups’ and reflected the knowledge production in display. The classification system showed an interest in variations, visual differences and function and not in ethnography. The object was seen as communicating an essentially measurable objective truth for the scientist. I hold that the original classification in the original culture from which the object was collected became arbitrary. The object became a part of the museum culture as soon as it was collected.
Museums reflected the original culture, but did it within the structures (space-time) of the institution, and material was therefore subject to the culture of the institution. The classification system revealed the museum´s idea of society, material culture and self- identification. Collections were about the museum as a legitimised national heritage and articulated it in classifications and policies. Arnold (2006: 243) holds that classification was the most powerful means by which knowledge was created and reinterpreted in museums.
Stuckenberg reacted to the ethnographic-cultural-historic classification in 1987:122 ‘It is a colonial anachronism that we continue to call studies of African culture ‘ethnology’, whereas studies of White culture we call ‘cultural history’’ (The Natal Witness 1987-05-06a). The collection was a way of keeping order between the self and the other and what was once a classification system became a symbol of oppression. Taborsky (1990: 54) holds that meaning, in this case through classification, was created by agents and can be understood as a long-term, socially created discourse that operated within a distinct infrastructure creating knowledge. The Natal Museum appointed archaeologists, anthropologists and historians who started to question and deconstruct the narratives in the museum. The changing socio-political environment provided a way to question the collection and its reflection of segregation.
Drawing on Merleau-Ponty (2004: 348), one uses the self as a measure to understand the other. This approach is used to construct an ‘objectivity’ which material culture rests on.
According to my informant Sahra (2005-10-05), the Natal Museum has used the Chenhall´s classification system123 since 1993. In 1997 Msunduzi Museum (VM) changed its language from Afrikaans to English which was regarded as Transformation and in 1998 they started using Chenhall´s classification system (Asokin 2006-09-26). The previously used numerical classification system was added to the new classification system. Robert Chenhall developed the Chenhall’s system in 1974, his goal being to provide collections of material culture with uniform terms from daily nomenclature (Blackaby & Greeno 1988: I1, Pearce 1992: 129). My informant Sahra (2005-10-05) regarded this classification system as particularly helpful for industrially fabricated objects, but not for craft objects. Chenhall´s terms identify and classify objects that appear alike alphabetically, which creates a hierarchy of relationship between the terms which it standardised (Blackaby & Greeno 1988: I1). Objects were incorporated into an American anglophile classification system accustomed to a western urban society earlier providing similar eurocentric problems. It was not the indigenous classification system emphasised by Transformation, but a eurocentric knowledge system which assumed power over the material. Re-classification was a product of eurocentric-based knowledge production, but since it was implemented during Transformation it appeared as a democratisation of collections. Time was a crucial aspect for understanding collection activities. Reshaping of classifications made collections represent time in line with the changes in the socio-political
122 In his opening speech at the 1987 SAMA Conference.
123 An American classification system known officially as ‘The revised Nomenclature for Museum Cataloguing.
A Revised Version of Robert G Chenhall´s system for classifying man-made objects’, referred to in the museum as Chenhall´s.
environment. Collections are a ‘time-reckoning’ of socio-political changes, and classification is a way of organising knowledge and visualising power relations.
Chenhall’s classification system was based on a system identifying objects with a generic term based on their original intended function in order to create the least ambiguity for cataloguing (Blackaby & Greeno 1988: II1, I2). Multicultural material culture, objects made for one purpose but used for another, poses problems when classifying and could result in a loss of information. Chenhall´s system has managed to get around this by including groups according to usage and in that way objects may appear in more than one classification (Blackaby & Greeno 1988: II1). Nevertheless once classified the change in value or alternative usage was limited. Placing objects in a hierarchal sequence where information of society depends on form and function limits association and memory.
New museology and Transformation have critiqued classification systems since they assumed a ranking order, e.g., between ‘cultural groups’. Transformation entailed an ambiguous position using frameworks that went against Transformation ideals to organise and expand the knowledge production of objects. Knowledge is retrieved from classification systems and the
‘new’ Transformation knowledge communicates eurocentric values as previously, but in a new time and space.
During Transformation the Natal Museum implemented the use of the ICOM handbook of standards AFRICOM. Documenting African Collections124 (1996) for their ethnographical collection. This system was especially developed to deal with the circumstances of African material culture. Following Merleau-Ponty (2004: 350), I suggest that the context, relation and appearance of an object give it its possible interpretation. Classification systems provide a context and a relation in which material culture appears. AFRICOM allows the material to appear in an African context, and at the same time voids the power associated with eurocentric classification systems.
The classification entails extracting information from material culture. If the classification system cannot provide this, the object can only be appreciated for its visual appeal.125 AFRICOM (1996) acknowledged that African material culture had been misclassified and
124 Hereafter referred to as AFRICOM.
125 Something that can be noted in the African Art display in the Natal Museum.
that knowledge had been lost. It tried to develop a system that was suitable for the conditions of African material. AFRICOM was trying to bridge these aspects by including different kinds of information, listing it and defining the content. The information was grouped in the customary way and provided a detailed physical identification of objects, placing them in their socio-cultural, geographical and chronological context.
AFRICOM assumed that material culture was not collected by the groups that originally made and used it; and aimed to place it in its cultural and historical context. Chenhall´s system indifferently assumes that the context is known and documented and that the collector and the maker belong to the same culture. AFRICOM presumed that information was unknown, and tackled the discourse and epistemology of anthropological collections affected by colonial conditions. It aimed to provide as much information as possible and put the objects into context. My informant Sahra (2005-10-05) used AFRICOM for the ethnographic collection, but regarded it as less detailed than Chenhall´s. She added that she would not use AFRICOM for the cultural history collection because Chenhall´s gave more entries.
This suggests that more knowledge had been obtained from western-made objects to construct a classification system like Chenhall´s. Classification also depended on the questions asked of the material culture; these are based on a general understanding and knowledge of material culture. Pearce (1992: 131) holds that the process of classification generated meaning and rested on the assumption that classifications correspond in a direct way with the real world.
Chenhall´s proposes a more consistent approach to western artefacts, whereas AFRICOM reveals an acknowledged lack of facts and differences between groups, providing a deconstruction of a pan-African culture.
Pearce (1990: 128) holds that if objects are to be of social use they must be structured according to socially understood rules such as classification systems. Classification systems reveal different questions asked ‘in’ different times and different ways of organising time and space. When the collection was ‘out’ of the time of the classification system, it no longer answered the questions asked of the material. The objects were regarded as numb. A new classification system could not fill knowledge gaps in past collections, but it could provide for the material to be better understood according to new questions and answers. To be fully transformed the heritage sector should ideally develop an indigenous classification system
based on all heritage expressions in South Africa. That would be the most earnest and democratic way of documentation, but also the most complicated system to develop.