Lynnette Regouby, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, American Philosophical Society (APS) Museum
Proposal Type: Structured Conversation
Seeking: Additional Presenters, Specific Expertise, General Feedback and Interest
Abstract: Despite providing a corrective to grand narratives about great men or great events, “counter-narratives” can also reproduce some of the worst characteristics of the great men narrative strategy. This session choreographs a structured conversation about the misleading oppositions between great men vs. counter-narratives and promotes a conversation about forms of storytelling that disrupt such binary narratives in favor of more complex, multi-vocal stories about the past.
Seeking: Replacing the “great men” narrative with a “counter narrative” risks reaffirming a fundamentally problematic rhetoric, one which erases complexity in favor of clean stories of heroism, timeless ideas, and triumphs. Further, it risks reproducing the same storytelling techniques that focus attention on individuals rather than communities, on consistency rather than change, on success rather than failure. We believe that public historians and museum professionals must first abandon the false perception that ours stories need to deliver fully-formed and complete knowledge to visitors, because the attempt to create such stories produces flattened and misleading depictions of people into efficient classes — “white men,” the “other,” the “counter-” –when in fact none of these are reducible to a single class or category.
This session will take Native American and Indigenous history as a case study for rethinking the kinds of narratives we use to educate the public about the past. We envision the session as a structured conversation with multiple panelists responding to a series of prepared questions from a moderator, followed by open discussion. We are looking for museum professionals and independent scholars who have experience narrating complex stories of Native American history, including tribal museums, who would be interested in responding to a series of questions, which might include:
- What do we lose when we ban the great men narratives from our exhibitions?
- What new methods or techniques of story-telling are required when we give up the binary opposition between great-men and counter narratives?
- What rhetorical strategies can replace the inherent oppositions in binary narratives: individual vs. other, progress vs. past, dominance vs. submission, success vs. failure.
- What does a participatory museum look like when the narrative is complex rather than binary?
We would also be interested in receiving suggestions for additional questions to address during the session.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Lynnette Regouby,lregouby[at]amphilsoc.org
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
All feedback, and offers of assistance, should be submitted by July 3, 2015.
Related Topics: Archives, Memory, Museums/Exhibits
Great topic, Lynnette. At the Western History Association conference a few years ago, I gave a paper about how “Great Red Men” histories, focused on only chiefs, were as incomplete as “Great White Men” histories. Native communities had and have diverse types of leaders, and it’s important to recognize multiple ways that communities collaborated to achieve their aims. I’m sure you’ve already read Amy Lonetree’s Decolonizing Museums. You might reach out to some of the folks at the tribal museums discussed in the book to see if they would be interested in joining your session.
Thanks, Laurie – that’s a great suggestion.
Lynette,
Some additional resources include the collection of case studies edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, _Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives_; Raney Bench, _Interpreting Native American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites_; and Mary Lawlor, _Public Native America_.
-Melinda Jette
Thanks, Melinda – we’ll check into those as well!
This is a great idea for a session, I think you are very right that we are in danger of creating just another triumphant narrative that replaces the old one. You might want to reach out to Susan Shown Harjo at NMAI who just did a fantastic job on the new Nation to Nation exhibition.
Absolutely, thanks Mattea.