The Historical Writing Of The Collection: Benjamin's Collection Theory And Its Subsequent Development

Walter Benjamin's theory of collection is generally considered as a whole,while I prefer to divide it into two parts:narration in public collection and that in private collection.When Benjamin was alive,historicism was the main narration method in public collection.He found the relation between historicism and ideologies of the ruling class,and exposed the political purposes inside usefulness and authority of historicism,arguing that its stress on continuity and eternality suggests that the current social status is legitimate and reasonable.Historicism overestimates the lineal part of history,while overlooking those who are discontinuous and contradictory,thus making history a thing of monotony;what historicism calls as "new" and "progressive" are actually old goods with new packages,for they share the same kind of logic,therefore such a linear progressive history is actually an "eternal return",because potentials of history and meanings in goods are sheltered by this.In order to resist historicism in public collection,Benjamin chose to praise its reverse side—that is,dialectical suspended narration in private collection.Such narration emphasizes uselessness in private collections,thus it overcomes the monotony of meaning in public collection.Meanwhile,private collection narration is also attentive to fractures,contingencies,and contradictions that are discontinuous,transient,and disordered in history of goods,just in order to dig out the true history that is sheltered by historicism.In concrete ways,private collection aims to recover the intimate relationship between man and goods,so as to develop the involuntary memory,through which unparalleled history of goods could be found and their meaning potential could emerge.Nevertheless,Benjamin did not aim to oppose public collection,for it is similar to mechanical reproducibility in connecting goods with visitors through exhibition,thus gendering new contexts and greater meaning potential,or even political and cultural influences.In this reason,Benjamin's theory of collection is a contradictory unity.For one thing,he criticized historicism in public collection,and respected the contrary in private collection;for the other,he was optimistic about the effects brought by exhibitions and visitors in museums.These two are the same typical in his theory of collection.Benjamin's theory of collection is confirmed and developed by following museum studies as well as practice.Narratives in private collection is getting absorbed in public collection,which is evident in the following events:The New Museology criticized historicism and the power discourse behind it;self-reflection is even more popular in museums,while narration and visitor identities are getting pluralistic.What's more,visitors' participation in narration becomes a new focal point,which is typical in virtual museums.While virtual museums are providing chances of private narration for visitors,it separates private narration from public narration.Thus,the discrepancy of these two is still a fundamental question in museums.