Museums for the Planet: Critical Realist Philosophy and the Possibility of an Eco-decolonial Museology

Abstract

This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum's process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice. The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or 'MELD' schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of 'emancipatory neoliberalism' is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection. The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way. Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world.