MUSEALIZATION BETWEEN CHAINS

CONFISCATED OBJECTS AND DOCUMENTATION IN THE MPERJ COLLECTION

Abstract

This article analyzes the tensions between the penal disciplinary apparatus and the musealization process. Exploring the friction between the concept of "musealization chain" and the materiality of the imprisonment "chain," this text problematizes the collection, documentation and exhibition of prison artifacts at the Rio de Janeiro State Penitentiary Museum (MPERJ), especially focusing on how seized illicit objects mimic the surveillance logic of institutions of sequestration. It argues that traditional museographic practice, driven by an Apollonian ordering vocation, neutralizes the transgressive urgency of these objects. By displacing them from the prison environment to the MPERJ, their musealization can act as a subsequent symbolic imprisonment, converting polysemic products into controlled information units. The paper concludes that, in order not to act as a reinforcement annex of the State punishment system, the museum must understand the complexity of inserting such objects into its operational chain, so as to question the agency of the memories of convicts, a historically subjugated group.