The museum as assemblage: bringing forth affect at the Australian War Memorial

Abstract

This article takes as its focus the Australian War Memorial, including its collections, the physical infrastructure of the site, its staff and the range of people who encounter it as tourists, researchers or military personnel and their families. In taking up this interest, our intention is not to diminish, ignore or bypass the role of narrative and representation in their spaces. Rather, we aim to contribute to a more-than-representational appreciation of museums. This sort of approach redirects attention to a range of elements including lighting, sound and movement. These are typically seen as ‘background noise’ but in reality do greatly productive work in terms of engineering atmospheres and subject positions for those within its spaces. This article interrogates the way in which these elements are utilized in four areas of the museum, all of which are explored through ethnographic reflections referencing ideas of more-than-human agency, affect and the haunting virtual.

Keywords:

• assemblage theory
• the Australian War Memorial
• museum exhibitions
• visitor experience
• museum management
• participant observation

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by a University of Western Sydney International Research Initiatives Scheme [grant number P00020508].

Notes on contributors

Emma Waterton's current research explores the interface between heritage, identity, memory and affect at a range of Australian heritage tourism sites. She is author of Politics, Policy and the Discourses of Heritage in Britain (2010, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-author of The Semiotics of Heritage Tourism (with Steve Watson; 2014, Channel View Publications).

Jason Dittmer is the author of Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) and Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics (Temple University Press, 2013). His current research is on assemblage theory and geopolitics.

Notes

1. Kathryn Besio describes auto-ethnography as a qualitative research method that relies on participant observations and a self-referential mode of writing. Its name essentially refers to a melding of ethnography and autobiography, in which the researchers and their ‘situatedness’ is directly represented (Besio 2009).

2. Bomber Command was a division of Britain's RAF that oversaw the operations of the RAF's bomber forces.

3. Australia's military was involved in the Vietnam War for over a decade, first committing troops in 1962 and remaining active until their eventual withdrawal in 1975. Almost 60,000 Australians served in Vietnam in a war still considered to be Australia's longest engagement in warfare (Doyle, Grey, and Pierce 2002).

4. See http://www.awm.gov.au/visit/post-1945-galleries/iroquois/ (page consulted 20 March 2013).

5. The Australian military formed part of a United Nations multinational force formed to defend South Korea from military invasion from communist North Korea. Australia's involvement lasted from 1950 to 1953.