MUSEOLOGY AND THEORETICAL PRACTICE

STRÁNSKÝ AND THE EPISTEMOLOGIC CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION

Abstract

A critical rereading of the history of museology from the 1980s onwards is proposed, based on Zbynĕk Z. Stránský’s intention of making an epistemological cut, whose central objective was to ensure the scientificity of museology. Cut or rupture that consisted, essentially, in the definition of a specific theoretical object, which, for the reasons explained by him, could not continue to be the museum. With regard to the conditions of scientificity, it’s assumed based on some epistemological principle that Stránský's arguments were correct, notwithstanding the path that, from this moment of theoretical and identity crisis, museology effectively took. The interpretative key, both theoretically and methodologically, includes elements of museology, of history of science, and discourse analysis. It’s aimed to critically analyse the singularity and meaning of Stransky’s theoretical rupture, vis a vis this scientific discipline current state of art. In short, it will be argued, based on this rereading of both the critical moment and its becoming, that museology suffers from a epistemological incompleteness. It is concluded, therefore, that there has been an epistemological revolution-conservation in the museological field that, ultimately, helps to understand the contemporary configuration as well as the contradictions, exhibited in the constitutive duality of this field of knowledge production.