This section identifies three crucial themes that emerged from the research undertaken at TE.
Particularly, all three themes – the political, identity and authority – speak to Mouffe’s theorisation of museums as sites for ‘fomenting agonistic forms of participation’ (Mouffe, 2013b, pp.74). Evidently, these terms are conceptually and thematically entangled and my analysis responds to their overlapping relationships. These themes were indicated by documentation left by users when recording interpretations of language and are described in relation to Mouffe and Laclau’s discourse theory (1985; 2001) and ‘nodal points’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001, pp.113). Theorising key themes as nodal points has enabled me to map the outcomes for Shared Language; physically in my studio and digitally using Graph Commons.162 During analysis, nodal points served as visual signs around which discourse revolved (Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002, pp.26). This is clarified by academics Marianne Jørgensen and Louise Philips who describe them as;
In medical discourses, for example, ‘the body’ is a nodal point around which many other meanings are crystallised. Signs such as ‘symptoms’, ‘tissue’ and ‘scalpel’ acquire their meaning by being related to ‘the body’ in particular ways. (2002, pp.26)
162 See appendices H and S.
Similarly using this methodology, crowd-sourcing techniques are visible in relation to associated nodal points via an option to view ‘related terms’.163
The primary nodal point for Shared Language is The Political. Taken from Mouffe’s definition of ‘the political’ as constituted by its antagonistic dimensions (Mouffe, 2005a, pp.2), I use the term here to refer to users whose responses scratch away at ‘post-political’164 definitions in order to question the ‘common-sense’ (ibid) order of objectivity created by institutional text. For example, the words ‘revolution’, ‘truth’, ‘propaganda’, ‘utopia’,
‘democracy’ and ‘community’ appeared – and were repeated – most frequently in the category to ‘keep’. Given the United Kingdom’s political context of ‘salutary shock’ (Mouffe and Confavreux, 2016, no pagination) underpinning the Brexit vote of June 23rd 2016, I was unsurprised to find that users were concerned with the use and mis-use of terms that encompass our understanding of ‘The Political’. More so, the first of the Shared Language workshops took place days after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America on the 20th of January 2017.
In his enduring essay, The Politics of the English Language, Orwell defines the political usage of language as ‘designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ (Orwell, 1946; Orwell, 2013, pp.17). Purposely, I use this example to capture the spirit of interactions had with users during Shared Language.
Illustrating this, one user’s response to the word ‘truth’ testified its necessity; especially in relation to ‘Politicians and newspapers’. Subsequently, it was suggested that ‘fake news’
should be added to the glossary. Another user deliberated the term ‘mass media’ and left the description ‘all media is mass media in a world with the internet’ in response. Outcomes of the workshops also identified the word ‘revolution’ as a common term. One user stated that its
163 Refer to www.thepeoplesglossary.co.uk.
164 When using the term ‘post-political’ I am indicating the vocabulary of neutrality produced by the dominant narrative at TL.
It is this consensual prose of democracy that allows for institutions to regard themselves as progressive, liberal, contemporary, while also refusing ‘to acknowledge the antagonistic dimension constitutive of “the political”’ (Mouffe, C. (2005a) On the political. Abingdon: Routledge. pp.2).
‘meaning and use should be multi-faceted’. In response to the suggestion that one could introduce their own phrase or word to the work, ‘Brexit’was also added to the word index.
Through conversational interaction, I established identity as an emergent theme. This is demonstrated through the selection of words such as ‘class’, ‘representation’, ‘race’,
‘marginalisation’, ‘migrant’, ‘feminist’, ‘intersex’ and ‘queer’ via Shared Language. Within discourses concerning identity, public space ‘causes great turmoil in the register of representation’ (Braidotti, 2015, pp.248). This is accentuated via the outcomes of Shared Language. Indeed, identity and experience cannot be separated when discussing problematics of power, language and democracy (Giroux and McLaren, 1992, pp.8); and this is emphasised in the self-identification of users who selected terms that express their class, race, sexuality and gender. Referring to identity as a ‘relationship, not a thing’ (Brah, 2007, pp.141), the results range from broad definitions of class such as ‘working-class’ to personal self-identification like
‘queer’. Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed defines the criticality of representation in terms of institutions which she describes as ‘orientation devices’ (Ahmed, 2007, pp.157) that ‘take the shape of ‘what’ resides within them’ (ibid) and are ‘shaped by the proximity of some bodies and not others’ (ibid). For the purposes of this research, institutional language reflects the bodies and speech of those who inhabit and care for collections; many of whose identities are unrepresentative of the rest of the population (Brook, O'Brien and Taylor, 2018, pp.25). When reflecting on Shared Language and identity, Ahmed’s concept of orientation is persistent due the potential flexibility of spaces to be ‘freed up when they are inhabited by those for whom they were not intended’ (Ahmed, 2017b, no pagination). Due to the self-identification of users who define themselves as ‘black’, ‘queer’ or ‘feminist’ there is a call to disrupt what is reproduced via institutions and their discourse. In Ahmed’s words, this may be done by processes of vandalism because to ‘vandal is to damage what you are supposed to revere, to bring to an end what you are supposed to reproduce’ (Ahmed, 2017b, no pagination). In these terms, whilst Shared Language was only an act of temporary vandalism – much like to temporarily graffiti a contested monument which will be scrubbed away – users left signifiers of their identity in the hope to centre themselves ‘in “minoritarian” terms’ (Lankshear and Peters, 1996, pp.11).
For one contributor ‘identity means uniqueness – we are all unique.’ This comment captures the knowledge that personal experience and creativity could contribute in resisting hegemonic reproduction of identifications represented via text. Recently, projects challenging cultural histories via the representation of alternative identities have developed. An example of this is demonstrated through Leicester’s New Walk Museum ‘Museum Takeover’ titled
‘Identities – a relabelling project’. During the project, museum researcher Angela Stienne engaged refugees from the local community to produce a series of events ‘including a re-labelling of the Museum’s collections, presenting new interpretation of the objects on display’
(Stienne, 2018, pp.5). Emphasising the concentration paid by heritage museums to disrupt the curatorial gaze in collections, public areas were created for ‘diverse cultures and communities’
(ibid) to come together.
For some, this focus on identity and self-representation through relabelling collections fosters individualism (Meszaros, 2007, pp.18) and a culture of therapy over democracy (Thumin, 2010, pp.302). Museum consultant Cheyrl Meszaros challenges individual learners’
stories as a product of the ‘whatever’ turn (2006, Pp.16) ‘where museums engage the idea that
‘whatever’ interpretation the user comes away with is paramount, regardless of message ascribed to’ (Meszaros, 2007, pp.17) the object. Astutely, Meszaro identifies that without received ideas to draw on ‘there is no way to generate individual interpretation’ (pp.18). Whilst I concur that interpretation is a relational act – not ‘individualised, private or personal’ (ibid) – Meszaros fails to appreciate the power of counternarrative representation to making the unfamiliar intelligible (Giroux et al., 1996, pp.vii). In Meszaro’s eyes, it is discourse produced by collections that provides groundwork for interpretation. Conversely, I argue that through
‘adapting narratives’ (Rogaly, 2011, pp.18) via exercises like Shared Language, self-representation could become central to making collections familiar and useful.
Authority was raised as a discussion theme during workshops where associations with
‘authorship’, ‘censorship’, ‘appropriation’, ‘modernism’, ‘patriarchy’ and ‘hierarchy’ were also drawn. The terms ‘submissive’ and ‘passive’ were also raised to challenge authority. Some conversations revolved around curatorial decision-making and another identified artist privilege (Reiss and Pringle, 2003, pp.216). One comment card queried ‘who gets to create work?’ enabled thinking around authority as a sedimented system imbued and consolidated
by the collection and its display. Its inclusion prompted understanding that users consider artists – not just curators and staff – as authoritarian voices. Poignantly, the comment evokes Joseph Beuys’ acclaimed statement that ‘every man is an artist’ (Beuys, 1978, no pagination).
In this context, Beuys’ conjecture expresses the privilege of artistic authority rather than utopic ideology. Certainly, the ‘who gets to?’ question is prominent when considering authority sharing with co-producers. When referencing interpretation, not only does it relate to artmaking but also storytelling. Whilst it is recognised that many users might have something to say through the provision of digital engagement devices, recognition of dialogical value is overly determined by what the institution is willing to share. Sharing words, not stories, is limiting. Hence, the conversations and comments that were shared by users through this activity are valuable to contribute to the findings of TPG.