Catalogues and guidebooks reinforced the visitor’s separation from what was exhibited

Evidence

I want to recall, finally, from my earlier discussion of the exhibition that this ‘objective’ isolation of the observer from an object-world, in terms of which personhood was understood, corresponded to a distinction that was now made between the material world of exhibits or representations and the meaning or plan that they represented. This too the authorities and organisers seemed to understand. In order to encourage the proper objective attitude among visitors, they made a concerted effort to provide the necessary catalogues, plans, sign-posts, guidebooks, instructions, educational talks and compilations of statistics. … Such outlines, guides, tables and plans mediated between the visitor and the exhibit, by supplementing what was displayed with a structure and meaning. The seemingly separate text or plan, one might say, was what confirmed the separation of the person from the things themselves on exhibit, and of the things on exhibit from the meaning or external reality they represented. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 101

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how representation machinery produces the appearance of an objective, detached observer—parallels the Foucault-derived point about the exhibition producing ‘the world as exhibition’.