The paper discusses the ‘western’ museum practices of representing culture within a dominant visual metaphor as an inherently political act which separates those who view the exhibit from those who are on display. The act of viewing is related to the acts of ordering, defining and representing according to the categories of the ‘viewing’ culture, and serves to deny shared space and time occupied by the representing and represented cultures, a process related to the anthropological construction of ethnographic distance in ethnographic texts. Two recent Canadian exhibitions which attempt to use irony to subvert traditional exhibit practices are analysed: Into the Heart of Africa and Fluffs and Feathers. Into the Heart of Africa attempted to mount a postmodern critique of colonial collecting practices, but its one-sided use of irony reproduced, for many visitors, the colonial relations of power that made it possible for one group to dominate another. The narrative structure of the exhibit was predicated on a relation of difference. Fluffs and Feathers, on the other hand, directly challenged the white visitor's power to view and define native peoples, by dialogically inviting visitors to try on alternate subject positions that help to fracture essentialist notions of self and culture. Thus irony, a risky trope, can lead to very different results in museum exhibitions depending on who it is aimed at and who does the aiming.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AlloulaMalek, (1986), The Colonial Harem. Trans. GodzichMyrnaGodzichWlad, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2.
AmesMichael M., (1992), Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes: The Anthropology of Museums. Vancouver: UBC Press.
3.
BabcockBarbara A., (1984), ‘Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on Ritual Clowning,’ in MacAloonJohn J. (ed.), Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
4.
BalMieke, (1992), ‘Telling, Showing, Showing Off.’ In Critical Inquiry18 (3):556–94.
5.
CannizoJeanne, (1989), Into the Heart of Africa. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum.
6.
CannizoJeanne, (1991), ‘Exhibiting Cultures: “Into the Heart of Africa”’ in Visual Anthropology Review7 (1): 150–60.
7.
ChamberlainLori, (1989), ‘Bombs and Other Exciting Devices, or the Problems of Teaching Irony’ in College English51 (1):25–36.
8.
CliffordJames, (1988), The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
9.
CliffordJamesMarcusGeorge E., (1986), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
YoungT. Cuyler, (1993), ‘Into the Heart of Africa: The Director's Perspective,’ in Curator36 (3): 174–88.
11.
Da BreoHazel, (1990), ‘ “Into the Heart of Africa”’. Exhibition review in Culture10 (1): 104–5.
12.
DaneJoseph A., (1986), ‘The Defense of the Incompetent Reader,’ in Comparative Literature38:53–72.
13.
DoxtatorDeborah, (1992a), Museum Studies Lecture, Toronto, January 15.
14.
DoxtatorDeborah, (1993b), ‘The Rebirth of a Native Exhibit Inside a White Institution: Fluffs and Feathers Goes to the ROM.’Paper presented at the Canadian Anthropological Society annual conference, Toronto, May 8.
15.
FabianJohannes, (1983), Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
16.
FishStanley, (1983), ‘Short People Got No Reason to Live: Reading Irony,’ in Daedalus112 (1):175–91.
17.
GableEricHandlerRichardLawsonAnna, (1992), ‘On the Uses of Relativism: Fact, Conjecture, and Black and White Histories at Colonial Williamsburg,’ in American Ethnologist19 (4): 791–805.
18.
HandlerRichard, (1988), Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
19.
HandlerRichard, (1993), ‘An Anthropological Definition of the Museum and its Purpose,’ in Museum Anthropology17 (1):33–6.
20.
HansonAllan, (1989), ‘The Making of the Maori: Culture Invention and Its Logic’ In American Anthropologist91:890–901.
21.
HansonAllan, (1991), Reply to Langdon, Levine, and Linnekin, in American Anthropologist93 (2):449–50.
22.
HillTomNicksTrudy, (1992), Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples. Turning the Page: Forging New Partnerships Between Museums and First Peoples. Ottawa.
23.
HolquistMichael, (1990), Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. New York: Routledge.
24.
HutcheonLinda, (ed.), (1992), Double-Talking: Essays on Verbal and Visual Ironies in Contemporary Canadian Art and Literature. Toronto: ECW Press.
25.
HutcheonLinda, (ed.), (1994), ‘The Post Always Rings Twice: The Postmodern and the Postcolonial’, to appear in Textual Practice.
26.
JonesAnna Laura, (1991), ‘Exploding Canons: The Anthropology of Museums,’ in Annual Review of Anthropology22:201–20.
27.
KarpIvanKreamerChristine MullenLavineSteven D. (eds), (1992), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
28.
KarpIvanLavineSteven D. (eds), (1991), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
29.
KellyRobert F. n.d. ‘Culture as Commodity: The Marketing of Cultural Objects and Cultural Experiences.’ Unpublished.
30.
Kirshenblatt-GimblettBarbara, (1991), ‘Objects of Ethnography,’ in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Eds. KarpIvanLavineSteven D., Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
31.
KnoxNorman, (1972), ‘On the Classification of Ironies,’ in Modern Philology, August: 53–62.
32.
LevineH.B., (1991), Comment on Hanson's ‘The Making of the Maori’, in American Anthropologist93 (2):444–6.
33.
LinnekinJocelyn, (1991a), ‘Culture/Kastom/Tradition: Theory and Politics in Cultural Representation.’Paper given at the annual meeting for the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, March, 1991.
34.
LinnekinJocelyn, (1991b), ‘Cultural Invention and the Dilemma of Authenticity’, In American Anthropologist93 (2):446–9.
35.
LittleKenneth, (1991), ‘On Safari: The Visual Politics of a Tourist Representation.’ In The Varieties of Sensory Experience. Ed. HowesDavid. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
36.
MacAloonJohn J., (1984), ‘Introduction: Cultural Performances, Cultural Theory,’ in Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
37.
MarcusGeorge E.FischerMichael M.J., (1986), Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
38.
MitchellTimothy, (1988), Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
39.
MitchellTimothy, (1989), ‘The World as Exhibition,’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History31 (2):217–36.
40.
NicksTrudy, (1992), ‘Partnerships in Developing Cultural Resources: Lessons From the Task Force on Museums and First Nations,’ in Culture12 (1):87–94.
41.
SchildkrautEnid, (1991), ‘Ambiguous Messages and Ironic Twists: Into the Heart of Africa and The Other Museum,’ in Museum Anthropology15 (2): 16–23.
42.
SchroederFred E.H. (ed.), (1981), Twentieth-Century Popular Culture in Museums and Libraries. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press.
43.
ScottJoan, (1992), ‘Experience’, in Feminists Theorize the Political. Eds. ButlerJudithScottJoan W., New York: Routledge.
44.
SperberDanWilsonDeirdre, (1981), ‘Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction,’ in ColeP. (ed.), Radical Pragmatics. Academic Press.
45.
StewartKathleen, (1988), ‘Nostalgia – A Polemic,’ in Cultural Anthropology3 (3):227–41.
46.
StewartKathleen, (1991), On the Politics of Cultural Theory: A Case for ‘Contaminated’ Cultural Critique, in Social Research58.
47.
TaussigMichael, (1993), Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.
48.
TylerStephen A., (1987), The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
