SUMMARY:

Boris Groys’ philosophical essay focuses on the role of museums in the era that began after the collapse of the USSR. For Groys, the Soviet empire was the last state that legitimized its existence with a universalist communist ideology. In the post-Soviet era, one hears more appeals to include all possible identities, including the cultural national identity, into the range of identities represented in the modern museum. And yet, the tension between the nation-state and the empire is not the lasting one. According to Groys, it is the opposition between those who collect and those who are collected that constitutes the very nature of the modern museum as a public institution. Traditionally, it was the nation-state that acted as the subject of collecting and was the museum’s chief curator. Today, individuals and groups enjoy the capacity to collect independently of the nation-state. Modern subjectivity as such needs to be simultaneously represented and collected in the museum and to collect itself.
Given the nature of the modern museum defined by that opposition, the subject of collecting does not have a fixed identity any longer. Although Hegel believed that it was possible to have an objective view of history for it was thought of as the history of a national state, today no metaphysical grounds can be found for a supra-historical objectified narrative. As a result, one cannot possibly assume that modern museums can provide stable identities for various groups, including national and ethnic groups.