Jugoslavizacija muzejskog polja
The Yugoslavisation of the Museum Field

Summary/Abstract: The science of museums, like the museums themselves, has its own history. In the second half of the 20th Century the need emerged to establish and define a theory and methodology of museology. The road to the building of a generally accepted and legitimised museological discourse forked into two hermeneutic horizons, guided by ideologies of the then divided world. The cultural politics of Yugoslavia counted on the idea that historical patriotism created through the medium of the museum can serve as a solid ideological foundation in the creation and maintenance of forces of cohesion in the multinational socialist state. Therefore, a dense network of “museal units” will branch out, systematically following the state directive, but also as bottom up initiatives. Through visions rather than collections, memory becomes spatialized. From the method of `learning by doing` contours arise, the context specific givens of a – “nonaligned” – museological school of thought. The starting of the publication of the proceedings of the Museum of the Revolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the further text just Proceedings) in 1975 was motivated by the requirement that the process of performing the heritage be documented through reports about the building up of and reviewing of the activities of the individual museums, discussions of an historiographic character, but especially as well a place to be opened up by museological (meta-) theoretical discussions. Along with Yugoslavia, numerous museums disappeared which embodied its statehood. However, not only was their physical appearance (buildings and collections) destroyed, but also the procedures of knowledge on which they stood were forgotten – already for almost three decades. How is the history of the „people`s revolution“ to be musealised in a time in which its epistemologicalpolitical space of deliberation (and action) has been abolished? How is the voice of the heimatlos heritage to be revived? In the context of the revival of the Proceedings, in the time when its founder (the state), values and institutions which it promoted no longer exist, this text examines the scientific, pedagogic and social roles in the musealisation of the idea of Yugoslavia of two of the most important types of museum: NOB Museums and the Museums of the Revolution. It serves as a reminder of the bond between space and memory, the formative factors behind the values (and resonance) of the heritage. The theme, framed in the wider perspective, moves about the axis given by the questions for which the publication of Proceedings was initiated, but then also abolished 27 years ago: What is (was) the NOB (in the) Museum? How can the idea of revolution be thought in museological vocabulary?

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