The Impossibility of Representation: A Semiotic Museological Reading of Aboriginal Cultural Diversity

Abstract

By undertaking a semiotic analysis of the Canadian Museum of Civilization depiction and celebration of Aboriginal cultural diversity we question the constructed nature of the representations therein and how these representations encourage us-visitors to read the gallery as mirroring ‘the real’ of Aboriginal cultures. Located in Ottawa, Canada, we chose one exhibition within the Museum where we identified key messages that encouraged us-visitors to attach an abstract notion of Aboriginal diversity to the texts. Through abstraction, the selection of objects and images, we argue, take on a connoted meaning which enables them to stand in for or represent an abstract concept of diversity. As important sites of critical curriculum studies (Ibrahim, 2004), we suggest through what we are calling ‘semiotic pedagogy’ that educators and learners take a critical reading of such exhibitions, with particular attention to the way the logic of the narratives presented reinforces or disrupts (their) notions of Aboriginal cultures.