Beyond the cult of the replicant : museums and historical digital objects : traditional concerns, new discourses

Prevailing debates on the meaning and relationships between historical collections and virtual/digital “historical” objects are bounded by established heritage discourses, material culture paradigms, and the object-centeredness of museum culture. Digital objects, their value, meaning, and presence, have been informed by these conventions and subsequently judged from the standpoint of the “superior” physical counterpart. Furthermore, the use and intention of digital “historical” objects are rooted in older conventions of representation, that is, as historical documents, functioning materials, and as semiotic texts. In referring to established theories of the material and immaterial, theorist Katherine Hayles (1999, 94) argues that technologies are cultural constructs, and therefore their subsequent meanings and imaginative uses are dependent on the cultural values and meanings attributed to them. Put simply, challenging the illusion of the immaterial can be a liberating force, opening up new discursive possibilities. Therefore, in this chapter I critically examine the debates around the original-material/copy-immaterial divide and map new definitions and terminologies for digital historical collections. Most research undertaken on destabilizing the material/immaterial binary and the mapping of new definitions and terminologies has been done in the field of digital art and the uses of multimedia in exhibitions. This chapter takes these discourses in a new direction by rethinking definitions of, and relationships between, analog and digital historical objects drawing on specific case examples. I argue that the roles and uses of the digital object must be understood as part of the broader heritage complex - an institutionalized culture of practices and ideas that is inherently political, socially and culturally circumscribed, and as such implicated in the cycle of heritage value and consumption