Diversitet og museale heterotopier – om naturalisering og nationalisering af kulturel diversitet i migrantnationer

Sammendrag

In old nation states such as those in Scandinavia, one current agenda is to bring cultural diversity into the museums in order to break up the mono-cultural narrative (whether national or local), and as such to undermine the formation and solidification of nation states that the nineteenth-century proliferation of museums was undoubtedly closely linked with. In the twenty-first century, migration – in particular – has challenged the traditional grand narratives of national heritage and unity materialized in museums. However, when turning to settler or migrant nations, this agenda is turned upside down. Discussing examples from museums in New York and Sydney and their way of dealing with migrant identities and indigenous people, this paper argues that cultural diversity can also be naturalized, normalized, or even nationalized as cultural heritage. In this alternative grand narrative, indigenous people risk ending up as an anomaly or internal ‘other’. Finally , these complex dynamics of cultural diversity and musealising practices are discussed in the perspective of the Foucauldian notion of heterotopias.