IBM: Ideology, Babel And Museum
The Myth and Reality of Universities - Contd...

California State University, Northridge

Discussion 3

In the third and final discussion, I propose university as a museum. My argument is that universities more or less simulate the museum structures in their ordering of disciplines, departments, information, documentation, classification etc. The ritualism involved in the making and functioning of the museums is conceptually and pragmatically replicated in the universities also.

Carol Duncan in her path-breaking study on museums, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums, argues this case of rituality of the museums.

“Like most ritual spaces, museum space is carefully marked off and culturally designated as reserved for a special quality of attention- in this case for contemplation and learning.” (Museum as Ritual, CR. Carol Duncan P.10)

If we look at the definitions and explanations of the concept of university, we could see well that the special ‘territory’, ‘the field of investigation’ etc walk shoulder to shoulder with what Duncan talks about the ritualistic aspects of the museums. The emphasis that she gives on ‘contemplation and learning’ is an a priori condition even to the universities. This speciality of museums (and here universities) as a ritual gives a particular framework for receiving it as a part of the cultural discourse. Duncan quotes Mary Douglas to prove this point. “A ritual provides a frame. The marked off time or place alerts a special kind of expectancy, just as the oft-repeated ‘once upon a time’ creates a mood receptive to fantastic tales.” (ibid. P.11)

The ritual related to the universities starts right from their thresholds. The marked off private space from the public arena, makes it a special space. The history of the university complete with the architectural magnificence, landscaping, the celebrity and historical names attached to the roll of honour, the portrait galleries, collection in library, alumni association, excellence in sports, excellence in research etc, add to the ritualistic flavour of the university. These characteristics function as a framework to view the university and its ingredients as if we were watching an artifact in a museum display.

Superimposing the image of museum over that of a university is in many ways an interesting act. The museum powered with all its knowledge producing activities and structures has to make perpetual re-classificatory acts according to the internal and external influences happening in the very museum discourse. The finding of a new historical artifact forces the whole discourse around a particular artifact (related to the new finding) to be reformulated. And this in turn gives birth to a ripple of classificatory waves in the general museum discourse.

If the finding of an artifact is an inherent issue of the museum discourse, suppression and repression of certain findings is also a part of the museum discourse. If one finding would radically (negatively) affect the future prospectus of a museum (in terms of economic interests and credibility etc), then the authorities who rule over the structure would take a repressive decision either to vault the whole new finding or to channelise the finding into a harmless direction. I would quote Duncan at length here:

“Like science and history museums, public art museums are mediating institutions, situated between academic and critical communities on one side, and on the other, trustees, the museum going public, and on occasion, state officials all of whom expect museum to confirm their own beliefs about art…The curatorial staff may share many of the views of their academic colleagues; but the government supported and/or tax free public institutions in which they work are under pressure to present forms of knowledge that have recognizable meaning and value for a broader community. They are expected to augument and reinforce the communities’ collective knowledge about itself and its place in the world, and to preserve the memory of its most important generally accepted values and beliefs.” (Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, P.103)

Placed between the research community and the funding authorities, universities replicate a true picture of the museum’s dilemma as noted by Carol Duncan. If the museums have to suppress certain information in order to uphold the ‘accepted values and beliefs’ (which could be easily translated as economic and political interests), the universities have to suppress certain information for the same reason. If suppression is not the way with the university, then surreptitious application of the same knowledge/information would be the general aim of that holding back of it from the public view.

There is a marked difference in this case of suppression of information, between the museums and the universities. Whereas the museums are paid to suppress certain information, the universities are paid to produce certain knowledge and information for exclusive use. This exclusivity itself means that it is barred from the public access or use. While talking about the input-output ratio in the higher education, it is exactly what Lyotard talks in terms of performativity. The result of this performativity is not for the ‘general good of all’ in the democratic sense. It is a knowledge exclusively produced for the accumulation of surplus wealth and profit in the hands of those who invest in the universities.

As we have seen in discussion 2, university makes a kind of reversed Babel effect, ie creating a unified language in the place of polyphony. Museums too make this kind of homogenous effect. In his renowned work, ‘Museum in Ruins”, Douglas Crimp notes:

“Founded on the disciplines of archaeology and natural history, both inherited from the classical age, the museum was a discredited institution from its very inception. And the history of museology is a history of the various attempts to deny the heterogeneity of the museum, to reduce it to a homogenous system or series.” (Museum in Ruins. P 53-54)

We have to look at the stress that Crimp gives on museology than on museum. The accusation of steamrolling is leveled not against museum but its discipline, museology, which is nothing but the discourse of museums. University too finds itself in the same realm, which is between the discourse and the guardians and generators of this discourse.

One should not fail to notice the word that Crimp uses to qualify the museum as an institution. He uses ‘discredited’ and that resounds the connotations of an unholy conception through an incestuous marriage between archaeology and natural history. Crimp almost delegitimizes (and makes it illegitimate) museum in the public discourse. This idea of incest is furthered in a different Freudian way by Marina Grzinic. In her article, ‘Does Contemporary Art Need Museums Anymore?’ Marina argues that the original idea of Museum is already dead. She talks of it as a death of the father or a castrated father. She clearly demarcates the date of death of the ‘father museum’ sometime in the end of 1980s. Marina observes:

“….the 80s museum was a house of art, and the 90s museum is the obscene museum, which reveals all its power, without any mask. These two poles can be seen as, first the protective museum, the second the obscene, the authoritarian, empowered museum. The two poles that can be reformulated as appearance versus reality, the protective institution against the reality of the over-empowered museum today that becomes so transparent, obscene in its visibility.” (article included in the book, Interarchive edited by Beatrice Von Bismarck, 2002, P.157)

Marina continues her argument a little later: “The two museum conditions, the imaginary and real, are what is left, once the paternal symbolic authority disintegrates. (What is missing is the museum as the carrier of symbolic authority, the name of the father!) What we get are strangely de-realized museums, blind museum mechanisms that en/act immediately, with no delay.” (Ibid. 157)

Both in Crimp and Marina, one will not miss the high ringing of the Oedipal connotations. The illegitimate power that the museum structures carry is perhaps, anti-thesis to the repenting mythical Oedipus. We need not enter into that game at this juncture. What interests me is the obscene power that unveils itself both in the physical and ideational structures of museums. And I find that the same obscenity is visible in the universities also.

As a researcher, curator, educationist, pedagogue, student, staff member, ordinary member of the public who has received higher education in a university in any part of the world, how one would look at this notion of University as a Museum? Despite the fact that many scholars have negatively commented on the museum discourse (therefore universities also) how could one positively see the contributions of the university as a museum?

With these questions I would close my essay here. But before that a comment of Duncan sounds quite compelling:

“Above all they (art museums) are spaces in which communities can work out the values that identify them as communities. Whatever their limitations, however large or small and however peripheral they often seem, art museum space is a space worth fighting for.” (Civilizing Rituals. P,134)

I believe Universities are the spaces worth fighting for.

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