Apart from the important instance of 'hate speech' (for clarity I am 
referring to General Chong, USAF) and the reaction to a call for what 
could certainly be termed mass murder if not genocide, and the role 
that the cultural sector organizations must or should play in 
responding to that, internally among their own staff, if not 
externally, there is a more general and broader social relevance.

Consider this:

"Museums can be powerful identity-defining machines. To control a 
museum means precisely to control the representation of a community and 
some of its highest most authoritative truths. It also means the power 
to define and rank people, to declare some as having a greater share 
than others in the community's common heritage - in its very identity.

... It is precisely for this reason that museums and museum practices 
can become objects of fierce struggle and impassioned debate."

[Carol Duncan, 'Art museums and the ritual of citizenship'. Karp, I. 
and S. Lavine (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of 
Museum Display, Washington, DC: Smithsonian.1991]


Of course museums are not the only and certainly not the primary 
powerful identity-defining machines in this society. Perhaps CNN or Fox 
News does it for you. Nonetheless, there's more to 'inclusion' than a 
session at AAM every other year.

-L.D.



On Aug 30, 2005, at 10:51 AM, Eugene Dillenburg wrote:

> I agree entirely that a billion Muslims should not be punished for the
> actions of a few.
>
....
>
> A handful of fanatics have taken the beautiful religion of Islam and 
> twisted
> it into a justification for the most vile actions.  This is a problem, 
> first
> and foremost for the millions of Muslims who don't like seeing their
> religion perverted (my girlfriend among them).  Yet little has been 
> done--a
> fatwa in Spain, a problematic procolomation in England, a few 
> editorials
> (mostly in free Iraqi newspapers), but by and large mainstream Muslims 
> have
> not taken many visible steps against the terrorists in their midst.
>
> (Compare this to the immediate and universal condemnation of Pat 
> Robertson's
> recent statements from mainstream Christians, and from politicians and
> cultural leaders in predominantly Christian countries.)
>
> Thus enter the neo-cons.  Whatever mis-steps they have made, they have
> succeded in toppling two facist regimes, and exerting positive 
> pressure on
> numerous others.
>
> .....
>
> I continue to seek the relevance of all this to museology.

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