The Hidden Power of Narrative in the Symbolic Space of Museum

Museum narratives are ways to discover and produce meaning. The tools for producing museum narratives in museums are not only texts, but each museum action including selecting the objects as well as arranging and categorizing them, directs the visitor to move towards a different story. The present study makes a distinction between narrations and historical stories that claim to tell the “truth” about the past neutrally and without any bias. This study investigates museum narratives with a critical discourse analysis approach. According to this research, cultural documentation and production of narratives are required to be seen as one of the political methods of knowledge production and the outcome of power relations. While investigating the hidden power of narratives, the present study considers them as social constructions and the outcomes of various discourses, and investigates the challenges and opportunities of producing and reproducing museum narratives. The present essay investigates the importance of narratives in legitimizing, integrating the sensitive narratives in cultural intersection centers and the active and participatory presence of the audience in the reproduction of “democratic” narratives in the modern museums. According to the results of the present study, upon entering the marked space of the museum, the conflict on the social and individual level over the production of meanings begins, and the hegemonic narratives are a historical and cultural product and the result of the conflict between discourses and random micro and macro narratives around the museum text.The present study investigates the discursive nature of museums and museum narratives with the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of the theoretical framework of discourse analysis and reviews the challenges and opportunities of producing and reproducing narratives as a social construct and an outcome of various discourses. According to the understanding that was obtained from the common assumptions of the discourse analysis approaches, as soon as one enters the symbolic space of the museum, the conflict at the social and individual level over the production of meanings begins. Entering the discursive space of a museums is entering the conflicting field of museum discourses against each other and in the competition for the right to define the correct proposition and “truth”. Finally, hegemonic narratives, which are historical and cultural products and the results of the conflict between micro and macro narratives, give meaning to objects, categorizations, identities, etc. in a museum.In recent years, several views have been proposed about how narratives are produced in different situations. In this study, the researcher, following the related literature review of museum narratives, points out the latent power of narratives and some of the most important discourse-creating capacities of museum narratives. The present study considers the capability of narratives in four areas: legitimization, creation of coherence, cultural-intersection centers, and creation of “democratic” narratives, as decisive in favouring the modern museums.

Legitimizing Narratives:

The museums that have been inherited from the Enlightenment era have grown with the ideals of knowledge and reason. Therefore, in the first versions of museums formed in the 18th century, vast collections (royal and national collections as well as natural and geological specimens, works of art, etc.) were collected from all over the world in order to respond to “curiosities” and help studying and classifying the world. (Goswami, 2018). These documents and evidence collected by museums were grouped in line with our knowledge and perception of ourselves and the world around us and produced “knowledge”. The generated knowledge and classified information as “objective facts” have been dictated to visitors since the early 20th century in the form of educational labels, audio guides, and tours.In other words, what was conveyed to people as “reality” was actually a narrative built around a set of objects that were collected, purchased, contextualized, and displayed by people with different agendas, goals, and personal preferences. This style of narrative production and one-way communication between the museum and the visitor, in which the museum is an authentic source of knowledge and an ignorant audience who is open to receive any message, has been questioned. Greenhill introduces this style of museum narrative production as a linear process of information and does not consider it as an ideal scenario for making meaning and learning in museums (Hooper-Greenhill, 2010). In recent years, in numerous ways of producing museum narratives, the study of subjectivity has become necessary (Kidd, 2012). Narration, as Bakhtin states, is the result of the “dialogue process” between different subjects. Some narration theories are based on this idea; only part of the truth is with the narrator. At least, truth is something that is to a large extent discursively constructed (Foucault, 1980).

Coherence-Making Metanarratives:

Since the formation of the first museums, the power of nation-states has been declared through the presence and ownership of museums. Early museums were often involved in the construction of national identities and played a significant role in affirming local identity and pride (Macdonald, 2006). In the process of articulating identity in museums from the perspective of discourse analysis, identity is defined in opposition to other identities. It is in opposition to the other (cultural, historical, social, geographical, etc.) that it is determined what the subject is and what it is not. People are always called by multiple and conflicting identity discourses. Identity discourses always determine specific situations for people and call them to a specific identity (Jorgensen and Phillips, 2013). Since the identity is always organized in the form of a discourse in relation to others, sometimes in the museum, the display of the authority of one group ends up at the cost of the marginalization of another.What we observe in some museums is the involvement of a form of distortion and transformation in the creation of a museum narrative due to the complexity of some issues in museum representation, leading to the production and dominance of a comprehensive meta-narrative. The aforementioned narratives sometimes represent the world in a dangerously simplistic manner. In fact, in some museum narratives, the scattered, complex, and ambiguous nature of world events and the unpleasant stories associated with them are suppressed in favor of clarity at best, and control at worst. While according to some, creating a coherent narrative is conducted at the cost of silencing discordant voices and rejecting disputed narratives (MacLeod, Hanks, and Hale, 2012), others do believe in the unifying power of coherence-making meta-narratives.In contrast to coherence-making narratives, there are narratives that do not attempt to represent others and ignore them. Investigating museum narratives from the perspective of discourse analysis can easily represent how the museum discourse is articulated towards producing self-identity and rejecting the other. The categorization manner and competing for invitation to multiple and sometimes contradictory subject positions helps us in understanding how to articulate identity in museums. A discourse-making example of the confrontation of conflicting narratives in museums is the way macro identities are represented against the regional ones.In the historical narrative of historical museums in a traditional way, the linear approach to history is dominant. In this way, museums present a coherent narrative and an authentic mirror of history to their audience (Marstine, 2006). In this macro historical process, often dealing with the introduction and representation of prominent and significant identities, many micro and regional identities were ignored. This method of chronological representation (historical) is a characteristic of the arrangement of museum objects in many known encyclopedic museums in the world, which has often been criticized and debated. The creation of narratives that seek to communicate and hear the voices of those who have been marginalized in history has gained strength in new museology. Narration here is a kind of resistance action against the forgetting and ignoring the marginalized groups.

Narratives in cultural intersection centers:

The phenomenon of globalization has recently created conflicts, or at best, concerns for museums in multicultural societies. The increased social relations, the diversity and coexistence of different cultures, the high number of migrations and the confrontation of values have increased the need of societies to tolerate values and differences. The current cultural diversity has caused a kind of dynamic discourse in museum narratives. In today’s museums, in order to welcome more people, we need narratives that represent the inconsistencies in connecting and living with one another. For the first time, it was in the world encyclopedic museums that works from different cultures and geographies around the world were collected in. The tendency of the great and prominent museums in the world to acquire and represent the diversity of the world’s cultures brought the museums together with people from different historical, geographical, cultural and social backgrounds.On the other hand, museums as “contact zones” are a suitable platform for dialogue between cultures. By producing participatory narratives, museums change the inevitable complexity of contact zones in favor of the production of “global values”. This is why the designers of the current exhibitions try to make the narrative representations of the museums reflect the cultural diversity and “polysemy” ruling the society, along with deep investigation and research in cultural perspectives.

Democratic narratives in modern museums:

As mentioned earlier, creating a coherent narrative in museums often ends up at the cost of ignoring discordant voices and rejecting small and marginal narratives. The application of critical approaches in museum studies has brought many reactions to hearing the voices of marginalized groups in the representation of museums. In recent years, museums have accepted micro-narratives from multiple people and instead of imposing the “top-down” narrative of the exhibition organizer (curator), they have engaged in “bottom-up” interactive narratives. Perhaps we can hope that as a result of this change of approach, we will observe more diversity and democracy in the space of museums (MacLeod, Hanks, and Hale 2012).