Abstract
We are a tipping point for understanding that museums must do things differently for future generations. Structural tensions of the past, present, and future concerning money, demographics, narrative, objects, learning and teaching have more fully revealed themselves as conflicts such COVID, Black Lives Matter, and Immigration among many others, exacerbate ‘business as usual’ making conflict concerning the dialectic between structure and individual and collective agency more apparent. Personal and collective resistance to structural constraints can be difficult to notice as they often quietly manifest on different levels. Here we focus on transformative agency (Sannino, 2020), suggesting that collective resistance is key to countering modern instantiations of neoliberal forces, such as toxic individualism. In this discussion we consider the core structures of resistance in a museum setting, examining the reciprocal and the interlaced structural constraint and affordances that make up the whole. We look into what might constitute transformative agency in these circumstances. We rely on cultural historical activity theory, the structure agency dialectic and anti-neoliberalism.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Rethinking the Museum
KEYWORDS
MUSEUM RESTRUCTURING, TRANSFORMATIVE AGENCY, CULTURAL HISTORICAL ACTIVITY THEORY, STRUCTURE/AGENCY DIALECTIC
