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ICOM International Council of Museums - International Institute for ...

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That is, to recreate order and method beyond the complex texture <strong>of</strong> reality. Yetmuseums are more than that: they are a powerful cultural ‘agora’, an instance <strong>of</strong>approach <strong>of</strong> the Different. And what matters here is less the norm than the possibility<strong>of</strong> generation <strong>of</strong> the new – new discourses, new ways <strong>of</strong> looking towards identities.3. Museum and heritageApproaching the question <strong>of</strong> identity leads us to heritage, that is – to the pathwaysthrough which Museology and History relate with the conceptual pair heritage x identity.Here I mention again Collomb 16 , who presents a notion <strong>of</strong> heritage and <strong>of</strong> theoperations <strong>for</strong> patrimonialization <strong>of</strong> references as movements <strong>for</strong> institutionalization <strong>of</strong>memory and the links between generations. In such process, that which is frequentlyconsidered as material or immaterial ‘evidence’ <strong>of</strong> historic relevance (thus justifying theattribution <strong>of</strong> a ‘patrimonial’ value to certain objects and/or symbolic complexes), isnothing more than a complex <strong>of</strong> objects, intentionally selected in the name <strong>of</strong> an‘imagined community’ – inexistent in the plan <strong>of</strong> concretude, but with a symbolic (andideological) <strong>for</strong>ce that is sufficient to define certain procedures <strong>of</strong> validation and culturallegitimacy. Heritage may thus be perceived under its real face: a mental construction,a value attributed to determined segments <strong>of</strong> reality, over which specific discourses areestablished.3.1 – Heritage as discourseHeritage may be, thus, constituted in the sphere <strong>of</strong> discourse. The articulation betweeninstitutionalized memory and the places and facts considered as ‘patrimonial’ (i.e.,having value as heritage) depends on a convincing articulation <strong>of</strong> discursive <strong>for</strong>ms thatincludes the creation <strong>of</strong> conceptual and visual sceneries (mise-en-scène), these latterso common to the museum field. And, if the discourse <strong>of</strong> History is produced as theresult <strong>of</strong> operations <strong>of</strong> mediation between the facts and the ways through which theyare interpreted and narrated, what makes History is in fact this new ‘reality’, created bynarrative:“Factual reality is superimposed by narrative interpretation, which recreates facts asfrom very definite ideological operations – aiming, in many cases, at provoking certainemotional effects in the interlocutor. Everything can be reinvented, adapted,manipulated: places, facts, characters, and also the time <strong>of</strong> History. All can becomenarrative effect” 17 .Museologists and historians should thus try to identify, in this process, the ethical limits<strong>for</strong> interpretation, “the subtle line that establishes the difference between interpretivecreation and ideological manipulation” 18 , caring that interpretive operations do notpresent facts in a completely distorted way. This is the most difficult task <strong>of</strong> theinterpretive process, since every human movement is crossed by sensations andemotions, and each movement <strong>of</strong> mediation incorporates new emotions. In thisprocess <strong>of</strong> metamorphosis <strong>of</strong> feelings, we perceive that “the narrative mechanism doesnot operate between history and discourse, but between the singularity <strong>of</strong> desire and itsoccurrence in time and in space” 19 . We must thus recognize that the new realities,16 COLLOMB, Gérard. COLLOMB, Gérard. Ethnicité, nation, musée, en situation postcoloniale. IN: Musée, Nation,après les Colonies. Ethnologie Française, 1999-3. Tome XXIX. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Juillet-Sept.1999: 333-336.17 SCHEINER, Tereza. Museología, patrimonio y la construcción de la Historia. Conferencia presentada en el IISeminário de Museos y Casas Históricas. Alta Gracia, Argentina, set. 2000. Alta Gracia: Museu Virrey Liners, 2000[preprint]18 Ibid.19 LYOTARD, J. F. (1973). Apud SCHEINER, op. Cit. (2000).73

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