TY - JOUR
T1 - Ways of (Not) seeing guns
T2 - Presence and absence at the Cody firearms museum
AU - Ott, Brian L.
AU - Aoki, Eric
AU - Dickinson, Greg
PY - 2011/9
Y1 - 2011/9
N2 - Boasting over 6000 objects, including replicas of a western hardware store, a frontier stage stop, and a late nineteenth-century industrial factory, the Cody Firearms Museum, located at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, is "the largest and most important collection of American firearms in the world."1 The museum, which creates a decidedly visual space through its near-exclusive engagement with looking, employs an aesthetic of domestication and sterility to frame firearms for museumgoers. Even as it transforms guns into inert objects of visual pleasure, the museum cannot fully erase the history of violence and colonial conquering in which guns played a starring role. The museum's rhetorical effectivity/affectivity, then, turns upon the unique play of presence and absence.
AB - Boasting over 6000 objects, including replicas of a western hardware store, a frontier stage stop, and a late nineteenth-century industrial factory, the Cody Firearms Museum, located at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, is "the largest and most important collection of American firearms in the world."1 The museum, which creates a decidedly visual space through its near-exclusive engagement with looking, employs an aesthetic of domestication and sterility to frame firearms for museumgoers. Even as it transforms guns into inert objects of visual pleasure, the museum cannot fully erase the history of violence and colonial conquering in which guns played a starring role. The museum's rhetorical effectivity/affectivity, then, turns upon the unique play of presence and absence.
KW - Absence
KW - Cody Firearms Museum
KW - Materiality
KW - Presence
KW - Visual Space
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79960877330&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14791420.2011.594068
DO - 10.1080/14791420.2011.594068
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79960877330
VL - 8
SP - 215
EP - 239
JO - Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies
JF - Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies
SN - 1479-1420
IS - 3
ER -