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 for...