A Review of Andrey Zavadskiy, Varvara Sklez, Katerina Suverina (eds.), Politika affekta: muzey kak prostranstvo publichnoy istorii [Politics of Affect: The Museum as a Space of Public History]. Moscow: NLO, 2019, 400 pp.

Abstract

The review is concerned with the novel approaches to museum studies proposed by the authors of the ‘Politics of Affect’. The category of the museum and its various interpretations by the authors of the book are the main focus of the paper. The forms and practices of promoting emotions in the exhibitionary space are addressed and discussed. The diversity of the forms of museum activity in modern Russia contradicts the conclusion about the crisis of public museums. At the same time the perspectives for revealing the Russian museum context to a broader international debate is an especially important topic today. It could both initiate a discussion of Russian specifics and supplement a global debate on the development of the museum in a modern world.