Героят и музеят. Сюжети от туристическите книги за впечатления
The Hero and the Museum. Narratives from the Tourists’ Impressions Books

Summary/Abstract: The paper treats the problem of so-called „consumption of identity“ (Anne-Marie Thiesse), being based on material from the National Museum „Hristo Botev“ in Kalofer. Visitors’ impressions, taken from impressions’ books of the museum from 1945 to 2017, are considered. Particular attention is paid on the problem how the political context was influential on the tourists’ mentality, and how deep was the match between ideological change and peoples’ viewpoints as reflected in the comments by them. A considerable part of visitors’ texts, left by people with various social profiles, are dedicated to reproducing the history and literary history narrative about Hristo Botev in its most canonical version. There are also notes, deliberately distanced from the canon. Most of them thematize problems like how the national hero and his attributes were exposed, whether they were displayed properly and how the exposition was matchable to ordinary peoples’ expectations, inspired by popular nationalism mainly. There are written impressions, focused on museum facilities like toilet maintenance and hygiene.The way visitors reflect the mission of the museum as education institution and how it operates on that level is also analyzed. The slowly advancing consumerism in background mode is also included with its heuristic potentials.

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