The transubstantiation of culture, or the Question of where to stick a toothpick in the Kolomna pastille museum

Abstract

The article analyzes the museum’s interactive program as a ritual of cultural production that allows it to transform the material substance of a gastronomic delicacy into a symbolically significant cultural artifact, and for the participants of this ritual to acquire cultural experience and “taste history”. Problematizing the existing approaches to the study of culture and starting from Annemarie Mol’s book on the body multiple, the author aims to analyze cultural production as an act of transubstantiation, through which culture becomes the result of making and acquires materiality, without losing at the same time its ephemeral properties. The paper is based on the materials of an ethnographic study in Kolomna, near Moscow, the appearance of which has significantly changed over the last decade, owing to the emergence of initiatives to create museums of Kolomna pastille and the establishment of pastille production according to ancient recipes. The author turns to the analysis of various forms of contestation of the status of new museums by employees of more traditional cultural institutions, and the boundaries set by various organizations for demarcation in the cultural sphere. Choosing a different perspective and considering one day in the life of a museum as a ritual of transubstantiation, the author offers a new approach to the analysis of cultural production.