The world beyond the nation in Southeast Asian museums

Abstract

National museums are exemplary sites through which nations tell their story and represent themselves to their citizens and others. The national museum has replaced the colonial museum identified by Anderson in Imagined Communities, as a modern technology and form of communication through which national communities are brought into being. Yet national museums tell other stories as well. In this article, I examine how national museums represent the world beyond the nation. Based on an examination of twelve national or national-type museums in seven Southeast Asian countries, I argue that national museums produce representations of the world beyond the nation and specifically of Southeast Asia that enframe and produce the geo-body of the nation state while simultaneously creating particular imaginaries of the world beyond, including a common use of contemporary Southeast Asia as a regional enframing device. While all national museums frame the nation in reference to the world beyond, they do so in significantly different ways with implications for the international and regional orientations of citizens of Southeast Asia. © 2012 ISEAS.