(Re)Doing Men in Museum Exhibitions? Masculinities and the Democratization of Heritage in South Africa

Abstract

Apartheid both created and furthered a racist, unequal, pattiarchal, and unjust society resulting in the large-scale suffering of the majority of the people in South Africa. In this text I investigate exhibitions and compare how museum curators displayed men before and during the democratization process in South Africa. I furthermore investigate how representations of men were constructed in museums and how certain categories associated with men were furthered. The reason for choosing this approach is that the field of critical museum and heritage studies has failed to address representations of masculinities and masculinized curatorial practices. Nevertheless, the marginalization of representations of women in exhibitions and collections has been implicit in the field's focus, as noted by Sabine Marschall, who states that female representations were marginalized in museums during the democratization process and were also not discussed in the public heritage debate. Yet male dominance and its implications have not clearly been spelled out, although this male dominance is clearly seen in South Africa, where I argue that the male norm remains strongly entrenched in the heritage sector, effectively hindering the democratization process of heritage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)