Deconstituting Museums
Participation's affective work
Helen Graham (Author)
Over the past 30 years, museums have turned to participation in the hope that direct involvement of non-museum staff would serve their claims to be accessible, inclusive, representative and diverse. And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger.
Deconstituting Museums argues that the difficulties produced by adding participatory practice arise from political incompatibility. In the representational liberal logics that underpin museum decision-making, trustees and professionals make decisions ‘on behalf of’ future generations and the public. This is a political infrastructure the book names ‘museum constitution’. Conversely, participation arises from ideas and practices from direct and horizontal political traditions, drawing those who act as facilitators into new relationships and expanding political imaginations.
Through sustained engagement with theories of affect, materialism, and feminist and decolonial praxis, Helen Graham identifies techniques for deconstituting museums. She uses experimental writing as a method to turn away from the desire to right institutional wrongs and towards relational and directly negotiated ways of organising. In doing so she locates participation not as engagement but as a mode of governance that is enabled by, and enables, variant political ontologies. This is an alternative named ‘participatory worlding’. The affective work of facilitating participation has long tugged at and frayed museums’ constitutional liberal logics. Deconstituting Museums envisages how participation and its affects might be activated in reworking the politics of heritage.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Museum constitution
1 Museum constitution, critically
2 Museum constitution, affectively
International museology I: ICOM museum definition
Part II: Detaching
3 Detaching, affectively
4 Detaching, speculatively
Part III: Participatory worlding
International museology II: participatory museology, participatory research and action research
5 Participatory worlding
6 Modulating
7 Organising
International museology III: ecomuseums – can ‘museum’ be deconstituted?
Conclusions
Appendix
References
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800089136
Publication date: 10 September 2025
PDF ISBN: 9781800089136
EPUB ISBN: 9781800089143
Hardback ISBN: 9781800089112
Paperback ISBN: 9781800089129
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Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe
Rodney Harrison, Nélia Dias, Kristian Kristiansen,
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Deconstituting Museums
Participation's affective work
Publication date: September 10, 2025
Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781800089136
Paperback ISBN: 9781800089129
Hardback ISBN: 9781800089112
Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Over the past 30 years, museums have turned to participation in the hope that direct involvement of non-museum staff would serve their claims to be accessible, inclusive, representative and diverse. And yet, adding participation to museums has often generated conflict, disappointment and anger.
Deconstituting Museums argues that the difficulties produced by adding participatory practice arise from political incompatibility. In the representational liberal logics that underpin museum decision-making, trustees and professionals make decisions ‘on behalf of’ future generations and the public. This is a political infrastructure the book names ‘museum constitution’. Conversely, participation arises from ideas and practices from direct and horizontal political traditions, drawing those who act as facilitators into new relationships and expanding political imaginations.
Through sustained engagement with theories of affect, materialism, and feminist and decolonial praxis, Helen Graham identifies techniques for deconstituting museums. She uses experimental writing as a method to turn away from the desire to right institutional wrongs and towards relational and directly negotiated ways of organising. In doing so she locates participation not as engagement but as a mode of governance that is enabled by, and enables, variant political ontologies. This is an alternative named ‘participatory worlding’. The affective work of facilitating participation has long tugged at and frayed museums’ constitutional liberal logics. Deconstituting Museums envisages how participation and its affects might be activated in reworking the politics of heritage.
