Museums in Mongolia underwent significant changes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By investigating activities of the museums as evidence of the reinvention of the normative narrative, it will be demonstrated that...
moreMuseums in Mongolia underwent significant changes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By investigating activities of the museums as evidence of the reinvention of the normative narrative, it will be demonstrated that museums responded to post-socialism in differing ways, but with similar outcomes. The museums evidence the intersection of political and popular influence from within Mongolia and from abroad that has resulted in revised master narratives which contribute to the construction of a new national identity. The causes for changes in museums offer insight into how the past is mobilised for politics and international relations. In Mongolia’s case economic collapse, cultural diplomacy and nationalistic rhetoric surrounding the anniversaries of the founding of the Great Mongol Empire and the birthday of Chinggis Khan have been powerful influencers on how museums have reshaped their meta-narrative.
Chinggis Khan, the core figure in Mongolian history has become the nexus for linkage of the ancient past and traditional culture, legitimising the present as a product of an ancient, ordained continuum. As Uradyn E. Bulag describes it, ‘Chinggis Khan is the fantasy structure, the scenario through which each of the countries involved perceives itself as a meaningful being or entity’.1 Further, the uncomfortable nature of the Manchu and socialist periods in the ongoing political legitimacy debate and in nationalist fervour significantly influence the extent to which and the manner in which these periods have been included in the story.
1 Uradyn E. Bulag, Collaborative Nationalism, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., Plymouth, 2010, p. 109.
2
The transition from the mono-ideology of the socialist period to the challenge to official hegemony that post-socialism demanded was a difficult process for museums due to existing museum culture and external influences. The form that the museums of the study take to this day reflect a collision between Mongols desire for self-assertion and the foreign policy interests of near and third neighbours. While Mongolian museums have survived transition, they have done so owing a heavy debt to deploying the ‘traditional heroic display’ while marginalising temporally significant periods of history that remain uncomfortable in the grand narrative.2
Carsten identified the complex interconnectedness between memory and the past and present and the political context in which they exist.3 While international influence has become more regulated in the recent decade in Mongolian museums due to economic stabilisation domestic influences continue to impact on the way museums present history.4 In reconstructing culture and history into clusters of meaning and hence value, Mongolian museums have been significantly influenced by the historical dissonance of periods of Mongolian history and by ongoing geopolitical anxiety.5 While their physical and metaphorical existence qualifies them for participation in building a revised national identity in the post-socialist period, the level of contribution has been delimited until recently not by a lack of professionalism or expertise, but by a lack of resources and a lack of political support in competition with economics, social issues and the internet and popular media. Without the time and support for sound planning, museums have with a few significant exceptions been forced until recently to take a responsive rather than proactive stance in regards their contribution to debate about history and as follows, national identity. The result has been that museums have been heavily affected by local and international popular and political constructs of what is jinkhin Mongol – true Mongolian.
2 Timothy Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2002.
3 Janet Carsten (ed.), Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, p.1.
4 Ibid.
5 Paula Sabloff (ed.), Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 2011.
