Liminal spaces between cultures and museum interpretation

Liminal spaces between cultures are mysteriously ambiguous. They expand and contract like tides controlled by some utterly unlikely moon.  I think that they must be occupied if they are to function, perhaps like quantum particles must be observed lest they wave with their own frequency, ethereal winds you can see but not capture. When abandoned, they narrow to thinly drawn borderlines. When inhabited, they spread as if inscribed in a rubber band. Hardly any scholars have been lured to enter them because they rebuff dialectics and syntheses. Homi K. Bhabha, James Clifford and Edward Said are three of the pioneers aided by the poetics of Edouard Glissant. From their work, I can offer six preliminary characteristics of liminal (inter-cultural) landscapes. 1) They contain overlappings, borrowing, and coexistences. 2)They employ creolization techniques by using local and vernacular vocabulary and viewpoints; offering counter- politics, counter-imaginings and counter-metaphysics; and forcing silences to be broken so as to give voice to past trauma and suffering. 3)They blur boundaries by questions, ambiguity and uncertainty. 4)They open the possibility of interstitial intimacy by innovation and by interrupting the performance of the present; and when public and private merge. 5)They are plagued with problems of misunderstood, misread and misinterpreted meaning. 6)Paradoxes thrive in them. (Barker, Lesley. 2017. Museum Interpretation at the American Historic House Museum. Doctoral Thesis. University of Leicester. U.K.)

I spent my doctoral studies attempting to understand liminal spaces and communities. I spent my tenure at the Bolduc House Museum attempting to interpret Ste. Genevieve as a liminal community of the colonial era. On Saturday, I revisited that museum, now rebranded and reopened under the name of New France, the Other Colonial America. To my disappointment, I found that the liminal tide has gone out and the border has thinned so much that almost no counterpoint remains. On the positive side, I see the value of the new space for the preservation of some rare items and the comfort of both staff and visitors is very much upgraded. 

James Clifford proposed that museums could become "cultural contact zones". I would take that idea much further and say that, for the kinds of dialog that are needed to confront the social injustices of our time, to articulate the prevailing cultural narratives that prevent honor and transformation from happening, somewhere, somehow, there needs to be intentional liminality occupied and expanding. In my opinion, museums have the potential to test what such spaces might look like and how they function. It is my goal to explore, advocate, articulate and create such spaces within the context of cultural heritage interpretation. This blog is meant to provoke and poke around in the search for how to start.

By Lesley Barker c. May 1, 2018