Page 112 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

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performance and an emphasis on the interaction with a physical world are
complementary, rather than opposed. The materials of play provide a structure
within which improvisation can take place, and the outcomes of the experience
are neither predictable nor predetermined. A Froebelian approach would
conceive of objects and display in museums and exhibitions as enabling impro-
visational activities. Often in museums and science centres, hands-on and inter-
active learning does not include this improvisational aspect, and the intended
learning outcomes are frequently tightly defined and singular.
Froebelian approaches to learning through improvisational play and simple
materials became influential worldwide by the 1890s (Brosterman 1997: 90–
103). At the same time, philosophical texts raised the issue of whether and how
it is possible to learn from everyday experience in modernity. For instance,
Dewey (1934) recognized that there were different kinds of experience – some
of which could be learnt from and built upon, and some which could not. He
saw modern labour (on assembly lines in factories, for instance) as separating
the lived moment from communicable experience. This work relies on mech-
anistic, repetitive actions that are unable to be reviewed or understood in con-
tinuity with other actions, so that this kind of experience ‘hardly deserves the
name’ of experience at all (Dewey 1934: 51). A similar argument to Dewey’s was
put by Walter Benjamin in the same period (1920s and 30s). Benjamin, writing
in German, used two words which translate as ‘experience’ in English. One is
Erlebnis which refers to the immediate, lived moment; the other, Erfahrung is
that which is accumulative, reflected upon, and counts as knowledge. When
someone has accumulated know-how or skills, they have experience in the sense
of Erfahrung; when something happens to them, that experience is Erlebnis.
Like Dewey, Benjamin characterized lived experience (Erlebnis) as becoming
separated from Erfahrung. In the wake of the Great War, in the context of
modern factory labour, it seemed increasingly difficult to exchange experiences,
or translate the lived moment into something which could be narrated, passed
on, developed. For Benjamin, modern lived experience is like that of the gam-
bler, who does not improve her chances of winning, no matter how many times
she repeats the game. He refers to this as the poverty of experience (Benjamin
1992a: 84; 1992b: 170–3).
The work of Dewey and Benjamin belongs to a large body of philosophical
and cultural writings which argue that modernity has placed experience in
crisis, by making it increasingly difficult to translate lived experience into com-
municable and accumulative knowledge. We have already encountered one
version of this argument in Nietzsche’s ‘On the Advantages and Disadvantages
of History for Life’. There Nietzsche argued that his age was marked by an
excess of historical knowledge unrelated to experience, unable to be employed
in everyday living and action (1997: 82). While Nietzsche attributed the problem