Flexibilní identita a projekt kosmopolitního muzea
Flexible Identity and Vision of the Cosmopolitan Museum

Summary/Abstract: The idea of flexible identity is closely connected with the time of accelerated globalization when cultural heterogeneity is increasing and borders between ethnic groups and nations are blurred. Still isolated cultures interpenetrate and intermingle more and more. The shift from nationally organised reference space to transcultural paradigm could be called the crosscultural turn. The principal problem of political, social and human disciplines is the relation between “us” and “them”–“others”. Kögler’s theoretical model based on hermeneutics and Foucauldian analysis of power is important instrument for intercultural dialogue. The museum (of art) is a part of wider social and political concern. It is a powerful ideological institution and it is a tool for shaping of identity (ethnic, national, gender, sexual, religious, cosmopolitan etc). The principal idea of this text is conviction that there is a relation between historical formation of a society, identity and a specific type of the museum. The idea of the cosmopolitan museum that has been presented was inspired by the political and sociological project of the new cosmopolitanism as it was formulated by Ulrich Beck (even though culture and museums do not play a central role in his theory). If we compare some historical types of the museum (national, modern, postmodern) we can formulate the function of the museum in the future when cosmopolitan world order could become realistic possibility. I believe that the concept of the museum should be denaturalized, decentralized and extricate from relation to national reference space and understanding of culture in essentialist terms. The important question is: Who should establish the cosmopolitan museum in the time of missing transnational institutions.

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