Subjectivity Through Self-Education: Media and the Multicultural Citizen at the National Museum of the American Indian

Subjectivity Through Self-Education:

Media and the Multicultural Citizen at the National Museum of the American Indian

1. Miranda J. Brady1⇓

1. ¹Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

1. Miranda J. Brady, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, 322 St. Pat’s, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada Email: miranda.brady1@gmail.com

Source

  doi: 10.1177/1527476410385478 Television New Media September 2011 vol. 12 no. 5 441-459

Abstract

This article looks at the use of digital kiosks and multimedia and multisensory presentation within the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C., to denaturalize assumptions about visitor and audience subject formation. Museums like the NMAI include numerous media technologies including multimedia presentations and digital kiosks as they vie for the attention of museum visitors. Proponents of digital kiosks in public spaces argue that they promote active engagement among visitors by encouraging “free-choice” learning, a process through which users make decisions about the content reviewed. This article argues that “free-choice” learning makes several assumptions regarding subject formation and that these assumptions constrain understanding of how media technologies shape meaning making potential in indigenous museums. It suggests that the existence of digital kiosks and multimedia presentations indicates disparate assumptions about visitor subjectivity and that these media are integral to the “techniques of the self” performed by the museum visitor as a multicultural citizen. 

Keywords

• digital kiosks
• National Museum of the American Indian
• multimedia
• place-based media
• audience subjectivity