Fabricating a Nation: the Function of National Museums in Nonracial Re-Presentation and the National Imagination

Museum Management and Curatorship ISSN: 0964-7775 (Print) 1872-9185 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmmc20 Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination Sandra J. Schmidt To cite this article: Sandra J. Schmidt (2013) Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination, Museum Management and Curatorship, 28:3, 288-306, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.807995 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2013.807995 Published online: 17 Jul 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 457 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rmmc20 Download by: [Copyright Clearance Center] Date: 08 June 2017, At: 12:29 Museum Management and Curatorship, 2013 Vol. 28, No. 3, 288Á306, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2013.807995 Fabricating a nation: the function of national museums in nonracial re-presentation and the national imagination Sandra J. Schmidt* Program in Social Studies Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA (Received 18 June 2012; ﬁnal version received 17 December 2012) South Africa provides a contemporary example of a nation struggling to find and cohere a national imagination that is universally agreeable. In their effort to create a sense of self based on unity across difference, South African relies on museums to produce and spread this narrative. The success of the narrative and its adoption rely on decolonizing modern concepts of race, museum, and nation that perpetuated the apartheid agenda. This paper examines national museums in the country for their success in adopting pedagogy and curricula that break down racial structures and their location in the nation. The inquiry finds moments of promise Á a coexistence of narratives and refusals to cohere Á alongside moments of concern Á struggles to remove the deeply rooted race-based structures from society and museums. Keywords: nation-state; museum; pedagogy; public space Introduction Museums have many meanings; each of us encounters this institution with different images and conceptions of museums. We may imagine an institution used to divide the world or as displaying images of memorial to provide moving encounters with difficult past events. We may recall encounters with artwork and cultural achieve- ments we did not know existed. The meaning of ‘museum’ is contained by history but finding liberation in new approaches to curation and pedagogy. In the case of South Africa, the decision by the government to invest in museums is an interesting one. The nation is struggling to identify itself against a past of colonization, violence, and racial oppression. One challenge is how to remember and account for a traumatic past while employing a hopeful narrative in the present and future. The government employs language of difference, unity, democracy, and heritage as core ideologies associated with the new nation. To be adopted into the national imagination, these ideas must become more than words. They must be built into the symbols, landscape, and experiences of South Africa(ns). Museums have been designated as an essential institution in developing national identity. This paper looks critically at the implementation of the Department of Arts and Culture’s mission to create a nation ‘united in our diversity.’ Success is intim- ately affected by South Africa’s deconstruction of the discourse surrounding and experiences with the ideas of nation, race, and museum, concepts used *Email: [email protected] # 2013 Taylor & Francis Museum Management and Curatorship 289 interdependently to enforce apartheid society and structures. I explore the apartheid and postapartheid discourse surrounding these ideas to contextualize the inquiry. I then assess the location, curriculum, and pedagogy of the existing and newly constructed museums in serving their mission as nation-building, deracializing institutions in contemporary South Africa. Nation and race divide apartheid South Africa Between 1948 and 1994, South Africa was governed by an apartheid ideology. Black South African encounters with domestic oppression began with the invasion of the Dutch in 1652. The arrival of British colonizers in 1795 created over 100 years of conflict between Boers1and Englishmen as to which white group colonized/ controlled South Africa. Although the Boers often identify themselves as the losers in this war, the real losers were black and native South Africans who were forced from their land and governed by different white ‘invaders.’ Independence from England in 1910 did not change the racial profile of the country as many white South Africans, having long resided there, set up permanent homesteads, and adopted identities as white South Africans, regarded this as their home. For 38 years, black (African) South Africans acquired some rights denied to them by the colonial regime but changes in the racial structures were limited. Any access to rights unraveled with the ascent of the largely Afrikaner National Party in 1948. They quickly enacted an apartheid policy built upon four principles: First, the population of South Africa comprised four ‘racial groups’ Á White, Coloured, Indian, and African Á each with its own inherent culture. Second, Whites, as the civilized race, were entitled to have absolute control of the state. Third, white interests should prevail over black interests; the state was not obliged to provide equal facilities for the subordinate races. Fourth, the white racial group formed a single nation, with Afrikaans- and English-speaking components, while Africans belonged to several (eventually ten) distinct nation or potential nations. (Thompson 2000, 190) The concepts of race (superiority) and nation were central to developing and maintaining the apartheid structure. Apartheid society was comprised of four racial groups, and individuals were classified as members of one group based upon embodied physical features, history, and geography and experienced society through race-group assignment. The belief that races had different mental, physical, and moral capacities generated a racial hierarchy. Intimate interaction across groups was forbidden and institutional divides limited substantive cross-race interaction in political, commercial, residential, and social spaces. Assignment of status and unequal allocation of resources turned the discourse of inferior and superior races into lived experience and justified apartheid policies. The adoption of nationalist discourse embedded racial distinctions in the geography of the country. The concept of the nation-state in this era reflected a shared commitment between people and their government: A nation is a group of people with a perceived shared identity and attachment to particular parts of the land; a nation has a history and a geography. The state, on the other hand, is an administrative-political-spatial entity. (Short 1998, 33) 290 S.J. Schmidt The state refers to the government that regulates peoples. The nation is a fabrication, a concocted narrative shared by the imagination of people (Anderson 1991; Cox 2002; Shapiro 2003). This collective sense is articulated when people distinguish themselves as ‘Australian,’ ‘Canadian,’ or ‘South African.’ Placing nation before state emphasizes contexts where people identify themselves collectively and consent to governance that maintains order within that society (Anderson 1991). This term described modern Europe where ethnic groups formed states and identities that differentiated groups and land on the continent (Boyce 1999; Connor 1978; Moodley and Adam 2000). National symbols, mottos, and languages were iterated discourses that linked people with their nation and produced nationalist allegiance. Apartheid South Africa may be thought of as a state-nation or context in which the state claims its citizenry and articulates the national imagination (Croucher 1998; Ma 1992). The apartheid government divided South Africa into 10 nations that drew boundaries around and between groups and aligned race groups with physical locations. Africans were (re)moved into distant ‘homelands’ where they were physically isolated from white South Africans. One outcome of this arrangement was that racial profiles were written into land (use). English and Afrikaner South Africans were given accessible land, natural resources that could be extracted for wealth, and farmland viable for producing wine. They presumed that Africans did not need ports or industry and were better equipped for areas where sustenance farming was feasible. The designation of nation was used intentionally to generate a coherent sensibility and unified social and political imagination of people within a nation, one that encouraged strong racial/ethnic identification. In these spaces, allegiance was to the homeland not to the African race. Given that Africans outnumbered whites, Indians, and coloreds combined, de-unifying African ethnic groups minimized the likelihood of unified resistance. A survey of museum history indicates their role in unifying nations and justifying the racial hierarchies that enabled colonialism. The process of curation is a process of inclusion/exclusion, categorization, and differentiation. One purpose of national museums is to allow visitors to see ‘us’/self as members of the nation.

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