Readings Response: The Material of Identities

This weeks readings got me thinking about how people construct identities, both for themselves and for others.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography,” takes a broad look at how people display people under the guise of ethnography. The article is a thoughtful contemplation on the history of ethnographic exhibits and on the ways that exhibition standards have changed. It would have helped the article if the author had clearly defined what she meant by ethnography and ethnographic objects. She used the terms as constants, even though their definitions and interpretations have varied greatly over the past century. I would not term the items she lists in the first paragraph, like moon rocks and pieces of the Berlin Wall, as ethnographic. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett uses these things to ask the reader why we would display non-aesthetic objects in order to challenge our notions of object autonomy. Her main thesis, in the last paragraph, gets around to making the connection, namely, that we should consider the context that an object is produced in and why we have an interest in it. This article is more an ethnography, in the current sense, of exhibition disguising as a history of ethnographic objects.

Colleen McDannell’s Material Christianity uses the material culture of American Christians to argue that people express their religious identity through things. McDannell argues against the dualistic interpretations of religion as a separation between the sacred and the profane. Because of this division, scholars have disregarded material culture, commonly situated in the realm of profane. (McDannell, 5-7) Throughout the book McDannell shows how religion and religious objects permeate through culture and can indicate shifting beliefs within religious communities. I agree with breaking the sacred/profane division, but I wish that the author had done so more completely. Even though she emphasizes how arbitrary those labels are, she continued to use them throughout the book. One of the big historiographical assumptions that McDannell challenges is the idea that after the enlightenment period people suddenly attained the ability to isolate religion from other aspects of life. Behind the writing lay far more questions that the author had time to answer.

One aspect of Material Christianity that got me thinking was the hierarchy that historians assign certain labels. McDannell took her subjects identification as Christian, living in America, before anything else. She discusses issues of class, gender, and race within the label of Christianity. She also discusses the different Christian sects, tends to keep the discussion in terms of larger Christian theology. Together, all the potential identification makers can make for a complicated interpretation. I liked how McDannell looked at different historical eras and was able to tie together multiple markers to interpret objects. For my powder horn, this is a good method to keep in mind. The horn likely meant different things to the different owners in different time periods. The illustrations on the horn point to different identity markers, and I need to choose certain markers over others in my interpretation. Thinking about religion, national lines seem arbitrary, and a few times McDannell stepped out of the United States for evidence. From a colonial period, my object mat force me to consider the different ways its owners viewed their world which likely do not fit the nation maps in my head today.

Readings:

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Objects of Ethnography,” in Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian Press, 1991): 17-78.

McDannell, Colleen. Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.