Museum as medicine? Healing and heritage in Indigenous fiction from North America and New Zealand

博物馆作为良药？

• 批准号: 2444551
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Kent
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2444551
• 关键词: Museum; medicine; Healing; heritage; Indigenous

Fiction writers from across North America and Aotearoa/New Zealand have imagined museums as tombs for 'relics' (Grace, 1975), responsible for 'mis-educat[ion]' (Taylor, 2010), 'monuments of colonial dominance' (Vizenor, 1998) and as spaces where Indigenous cultural expressions can 'laugh[...]', 'wail' and 'sing' their demand to be heard (King, 2013). However critical attention to the creative representation of museums has largely come from visual arts scholars and museum practitioners. This project aims to address the absence of critical engagement with how museum-spaces are represented in Indigenous fiction and explore how these representations connect to the desire to "heal" colonial histories through the reclamation of cultural practice(s), narrative control and the recovery of material artefacts.Research questionsIn light of this gap I propose a comparative textual analysis within a framework drawn from (post)colonial and Indigenous cultural theory in order to answer four main research questions:In what ways are ambitions towards healing through heritage supported, complicated and expanded by the texts?How is the metaphor of "recovery" invoked across the texts to convey both a process of community remembrance and material restitution?How far do the texts engage with Eurowestern models of curated and conserved heritage narratives and what alternatives do they imagine for the passing on of history?What potential is there to learn from Indigenous practices of 'knowledge-making and remembrance' (Lonetree, 2012) in order to evolve Eurocentric understandings of the museum?MethodologyWhilst considerations of the role museums play in processes of (post)colonial cultural healing seem more suited to a museum studies method, textual analysis can uniquely imagine alternatives that I want to explore. Using a framework drawn from both (post)colonial studies and Indigenous interjections that trouble the historic assumptions of this field, I want to establish a critical method that has the potential to shape the material and epistemological project of decolonization.Through an analysis of the ways in which texts complicate (post)colonial healing, I want to consider the potential richness of the term "medicine" in Indigenous contexts, expanding Euro-American understandings of medicine as a curative treatment for disease and instead considering the power of presence, remembrance and imagining the future. In critically examining this definition, I want to interrogate how the texts imagine heritage (in and outside of the museum) as a kind of medicine and trace to what extent these imaginings can be translated into strategies for survivance.The strengths of comparisonIn following Chadwick Allen's provocation to place Indigenous texts in conversation with one another in order to trace distinct and divergent patterns of self-representation (Allen, 2012), I hope to gain a layered understanding of the complexity of contemporary Indigenous fiction across different spheres and contexts. This approach also builds on Daniel Heath Justice's recent survey of Indigenous writings from across what is currently known as North America (Justice, 2018). Justice's comparison of multiple traditions is a call to what Allen refers to elsewhere as a method of 'active' comparative reading that I will endeavour to follow in my approach (Allen, 2014). Ultimately, in placing culturally divergent texts in dialogue, I aim to map the diversity of Indigenous writers' articulations and imaginings of the museum-space and trace both common ground and culturally specific strategies for imagining (post)colonial heritage.

来自北美和新西兰奥蒂亚罗亚/新西兰的小说家们把博物馆想象成“遗物”的坟墓(Grace，1975)，为“错误教育”(Taylor，2010)、“殖民统治的纪念碑”(Vizenor，1998)负责的坟墓，以及土著文化表现形式能够“笑[…]”、“哭”和“唱”他们要求被听到的地方(King，2013)。然而，对博物馆创造性表现的批判性关注主要来自视觉艺术学者和博物馆从业者。这个项目旨在解决在土著小说中如何表现博物馆空间缺乏批判性参与的问题，并探索这些表现如何与通过文化实践的重新利用(S)、叙事控制和物质艺术品的恢复来“治愈”殖民历史的愿望联系在一起。研究问题鉴于这一差距，我建议在(后)殖民和土著文化理论的框架内进行比较文本分析，以回答四个主要的研究问题：通过遗产治愈的雄心在哪些方面得到支持，文本的复杂性和扩张性？如何在文本中引用“恢复”的比喻来同时传达社区记忆和物质恢复的过程？文本在多大程度上与欧洲精心策划和保护的遗产叙事模式接触，以及它们为历史的传承设想了哪些替代方案？为了发展对博物馆的欧洲中心理解，有什么潜力可以从本土的“知识创造和记忆”(Lonetree，2012)中学习？方法论虽然考虑博物馆在(后殖民时代)文化康复过程中扮演的角色似乎更适合博物馆研究方法，但文本分析可以独一无二地想象出我想要探索的替代方案。使用一个从(后)殖民研究和土著感叹词中提取的框架，这些研究扰乱了这一领域的历史假设，我想建立一种批判性的方法，有可能塑造去殖民化的材料和认识论项目。通过分析文本使(后)殖民治愈复杂化的方式，我想考虑在土著语境中“医学”一词的潜在丰富性，扩大欧洲-美国人对医学作为治疗疾病的疗法的理解，而不是考虑存在、记忆和想象未来的力量。在批判性地考察这一定义时，我想询问文本如何将遗产(博物馆内外)想象为一种药物，并追踪这些想象在多大程度上可以转化为生存策略。在查德威克·艾伦挑衅地将土著文本放在彼此对话中以追踪不同和不同的自我表征模式(Allen，2012)之后，我希望对当代土著小说在不同领域和背景下的复杂性有一个分层的理解。这种方法也建立在丹尼尔·希思·贾斯蒂斯最近对目前被称为北美的土著作品的调查(贾斯蒂斯，2018年)的基础上。贾斯蒂斯对多重传统的比较是对艾伦在其他地方所说的一种“积极的”比较阅读方法的呼唤，我将努力在我的方法中遵循这种方法(艾伦，2014)。最终，通过将文化差异文本置于对话中，我的目的是绘制土著作家对博物馆空间的表达和想象的多样性，并追踪想象(后)殖民遗产的共同点和文化具体战略。