0415247462.Routledge.Pasts.Beyond.Memory.Evolution.Museums.Colonialism.Jul.2004.pdf

Pasts Beyond Memory

A follow-up and complementary volume to The Birth of the Museum , Pasts

Beyond Memory examines the relations between evolutionary theory, political

thought and museums in Britain, the United States and Australia in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on recent developments in

social theory, science studies and visual culture studies, it creates signiﬁcant new

frameworks for understanding the relations between museums and society.

Tony Bennett explores the evolutionary museum in relation to the earlier

Enlightenment museum and cabinets of curiosity, illuminating the distinctive

forms of visual knowledge associated with archaeological, ethnological,

geological and natural history evolutionary displays. He also considers the new

forms of social authority that evolutionary scientists aimed for in pitting their

ability to read the lessons of prehistoric times against the text-based authority of

the humanities.

The new ideas of what a person was that evolutionary thought created became

the basis for new forms of cultural governance, which the book examines in the

context of British and American new liberalism, and the colonial administration

of early twentieth-century Australia.

Both a historical investigation and a contribution to current debates, Pasts Beyond

Memory will help all museums seeking to shed the legacy of evolutionary

conceptions and colonial science, so that they can contribute to the development

and management of cultural diversity more effectively.

Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University, UK and a Director

of the ESRC Research Centre on Socio-cultural Change. His current interests

focus on the sociology of culture, the history and theory of museums, and cultural

policy. His recent publications include The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory,

Politics (Routledge 1995) and Culture: A Reformer’s Science (1998).

Museum Meanings

Series editors

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Flora Kaplan

The museum has been constructed as a symbol in Western society since the Renaissance. This

symbol is both complex and multi-layered, acting as a sign for domination and liberation,

learning and leisure. As sites for exposition, through their collections, displays and buildings,

museums mediate many of society’s basic values. But these mediations are subject to

contestation, and the museum can also be seen as a site for cultural politics. In post-colonial

societies, museums have changed radically, reinventing themselves under pressure from many

forces, which include new roles and functions for museums, economic rationalism and moves

towards greater democratic access.

Museum Meanings analyses and explores the relationships between museums and their publics.

‘Museums’ are understood very broadly, to include art galleries, historic sites and historic

houses. ‘Relationships with publics’ is also understood very broadly, including interactions

with artefacts, exhibitions and architecture, which may be analysed from a range of theoretical

perspectives. These include material culture studies, mass communication and media studies,

learning theories and cultural studies. The analysis of the relationship of the museum to its

publics shifts the emphasis from the museum as text, to studies grounded in the relationships

of bodies and sites, identities and communities.

Also in this series:

Colonialism and the Object

Empire, Material Culture and the Museum

Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn

Learning in the Museum

George E. Hein

Museum, Media, Message

Edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museums, Society, Inequality

Edited by Richard Sandell

Re-Imagining the Museum

Beyond the Mausoleum

Andrea Witcomb

Liberating Culture

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation

and Heritage Preservation

Christina F. Kreps

Pasts Beyond Memory

Evolution, Museums, Colonialism

Tony Bennett

First published 2004

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including

photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Bennett, Tony.

Pasts beyond memory: evolution museums colonialism / Tony Bennett.

p. cm. — (Museum meanings)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Museums–Philosophy. 2. Museums–Historiography. 3. Museum

techniques–Historiography. 4. Museum exhibits–Technological

innovations. 5. Evolution–History–19th century.

6. Evolution–History–20th century. 7. Science–History–19th century.

8. Science–History–20th century. 9. Colonies–History–19th century.

10. Colonies–History–20th century. I. Title. II. Series.

AM7.B385 2004

069

ISBN 0-203-64706-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-67333-6 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–24746–2 (hbk)

ISBN 0–415–24747–0 (pbk)

.01—dc22

2003024482

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