Narrativity and the Museological Myths of Nationality

Abstract The most enduring controversy at the heart of many areas in the humanities and social sciences, and impacting especially on museum history and theory, concerns the nature of representation. This is a controversy played out over many centuries not only in diverse academic fields, but across the wider social and political spectrum in many societies. Concerns over representation were at the core of the ancient ambivalence voiced by Plato about the world of artifice in service to the ideal state and its social, political, and religious orders, given the ability of human craft to simultaneously create and problematize those orders. Such an ambivalence has underlain not a few religious controversies in the ancient and modern worlds. This paper investigates fundamental beliefs about the nature and significance of objects that underlie and shape the dramaturgy and stagecraft of modern museums, and particularly institutions engaged in promoting mythologies of national identity and history.