Flesh, blood, relic & liturgy : on the subject of the museum : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Museum Studies, Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Manawatū, New Zealand
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2023-09-30
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Massey University
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This thesis models a methodology for disturbing the liberal-progressive accord in museum practice and for contesting the ascendancy of post-criticality within museology. Together the liberal-progressive accord and post-critical museology normalise a subject position that, despite appearances of agency, cannot act upon its socio-historical situation. How, I ask, might the subject of the museum be reinvested in ways that counteract its demise in the relation between the contemporary museum and museology? Seeking to re/establish the conditions of existence for (a) critical museology, in the first instance this thesis asserts the primacy of “the subject” as the museological problematic requiring theorisation.
A poetical-analytical schema of flesh, blood, relic and liturgy, a schema that pivots on the transposition of the work of Eric L. Santner into a museological frame, provides the means for reasserting the primacy of the subject in a manner able to anticipate new capacities for action in that subject.
Incited by the museal representation of violent legacies, in particular the centennial commemorations of the First World War, this thesis encircles one institutional formation and two exhibitionary productions: The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and its exhibition Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War and the standalone production, The Great War Exhibition. These monographs provide material instrumental to the argument.
Emerging as a negation of the negation that follows the schema’s intervention into the relation between the museum and museology are three affirmations addressed to the prospects of (a) critical museology: (1) a critical museology must transfer crisis into the heart of its language; (2) a critical museology must attend to that which does not work but which is made to work in the museum; (3) a critical museology must strike at that which is not there.
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National museums, Exhibitions, Museum studies, Methodology, New Zealand, Subject (Philosophy), Santner, Eric L., 1955-, museums, museology, critical museology, post-critical museology, liberal-progressive museology, flesh, blood, relic, liturgy, psychoanalysis, Marxism, political theology, critical theory, the subject, memorialisation, violent legacies