Re:"Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified b...
by rcxdude on Monday February 03, 2025 @11:24AM
(#42919861)
but in most cases they were dead before they were in the museum. In some cases dead before capitalism even existed. I don't really see how this amounts to a criticism of the museum itself (or capitalism alongside it). (I will agree in the cases where they were not: there are certainly a lot of infamous examples there, where even if the objects were dead relative to the culture that created them, they are also being seperated from the closest culture that exists today)
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:"Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified b...
by _DeadFred_ on Monday February 03, 2025 @01:00PM
(#42920939)
And lots came from places where the original culture of the objects had been replaced and/or was being erased.
Re:"Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified b...
by icegreentea2 on Monday February 03, 2025 @01:33PM
(#42921256)
I don't think the original quote is really a criticism (in the sense of "this is bad and must change") of museums in itself. It's using museums as an example of capitalist realism - the idea that capitalism today is so dominant and malleable that it's able to basically "corrupt or co-opt" anything, and that we reflexively view everything through capitalist lenses.
That even these artifacts that might have once been immensely important to the workings of a non-capitalist society, now exist dead, entombed within a capitalist construct - and as a sibling notes, as literally little pieces of capital.