Doing Dis/ordered Mapping/s: Embodying Disability in the Museum Environment

Abstract

This research is a doing of mapping/s through multi-sited case study research—Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (CSHF) in Calgary, Canada (pilot study), the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, Canada (case study one), and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg, Canada (case study two)—that engages in a doing of mapping/s in order to better understand how and if the embodied experiences of those with disabilities are included in museum environments. It is transdisciplinary research that brings together museum studies and disability studies, which takes material culture, relational, embodied and reflexive approaches with an aim towards a more holistic view on disability and museums. The two central questions queried are: how are the embodied experiences of people with disabilities included/excluded in the museum environment and how is knowledge produced about the embodied experiences of people with disabilities in the museum? The doing of mapping/s is not about fixing lines and encounters in order to produce a map or model; on the contrary, the doing of mapping/s is to explore differing embodiments and material relations among people, things and disability. Therefore, the approach to this research weaves in/with/through embodying in order to pursue new trajectories—in methods and methodologies, in material and relational theories, in processes of inclusion, in transdisciplinarity and in the doing of mapping/s. What the complex braiding of this research suggests is that a more holistic exploration of inclusion in the museum needs to be articulated, embodied, and drawn up. Moreover, that by embracing an unknowingness, a co-constitutive knowledge process and an embodied criticality museums can shift their understanding of inclusion from product to process and to an ongoing enactment of inclusion. ii The findings of this research include the mapping/s that emerge as various trajectories, acts, doings and makings of museums in Canada to reveal complicated stories. These stories are about: disability and ability; remembering, forgetting and silencing; ways of knowing through processes and products and are inclusive of differing lines of embodiments (reading, digging, resting, wheeling, swirling). There are no simple conclusions, concise summaries or easy answers but through a doing of dis/ordered mapping/s, differing ways of approaching, framing, doing, mapping and narrating are opened up to: new knowledge processes (and an unknowingness); new engagements (multisensorial and co-constitutive); and an embodied criticality. By mapping how disability is included/excluded in the museum—an influential institution where knowledge is both produced and consumed—insights into how society engages with and constructs disability are revealed.

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