The social construction of memory and the process of re-signification of objects in a museum space

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss about the social building of the memory. It analyses the reframing of the museum environment’s objects process, discussing the museum as a place of preservation of memories. Relating theoretical options with political positions, it discusses the power relations inherent of the process of social construction of representations of the past. The change of meaning of objects is the point of tension that enables hermeneutical reflection on the social relations in the process of meaning of material culture. So this paper emphasizes the importance of historical research in museums and analyzes the production of memories from three analytical foci: 1) the images built on the Brazilian black people and the abolition; 2) the look on the ethnographic collections of the Brazilian indigenous; 3) the discourses about this social group in the Brazilian indigenous museums. From a theoric analysis, this research demonstrated how, from the redefinition of material culture, museums constitute political spaces while construction of meaning over time. The research on museum collections makes it possible, from questioning the social construction of the past, to move toward a social history of memory. Key-words: Memory. Objects. Museums. Social History.