polysemic objects and partial translations: Museums and the Interpretation of Indigenous Material Culture in Taiwan Marzia Varutti university of oslo abstract This article explores the polysemic character of objects through an analysis of multiple interpretations of indige- nous material culture in contemporary Taiwan. My study focuses on a specific type of object—the canoe of the Tao indigenous group of Taiwan—and its interpretations inside and outside of museums. Theoretically, my analysis draws on the concepts of polysemy, boundary objects, and cul- tural translation to examine the different meanings and contextualizations of Tao canoes. The unique cultural den- sity of Tao canoes provides opportunities to critically engage with the propensity of museums to act as sites for the production, transformation, and dissemination of knowledge about indigenous cultures and to address the complex political discourses in which indigenous material culture is entangled in contemporary Taiwan. [museums, indigenous, material culture, Taiwan, translation, bound- ary objects, canoes] Museum studies scholars have rightly devoted atten- tion to the critical analysis of cultural representations and the treatment of ethnographic material in muse- ums (i.e., Clifford 1988; Hallam and Street 2000; Peers and Brown 2003; Simpson 2001). In most instances, these studies focus on specific museums, exhibitions, or collaborative projects. In this article, I present a slightly different approach to the study of the practices of cultural representation in museums. I frame my analysis through a focus on a specific type of object—the canoe of the Tao indigenous group of Taiwan—and its multiple interpretations inside and outside of museums. I use the concepts of polysemy, boundary objects, and cultural translation to develop a longitudinal analysis of how an object is variously interpreted in different fields and disciplines, and how museums relate to such interpretations. The aim is to explore the polysemy (defined below) of museum objects by mapping the diverse contexts in which these are deployed and, in the process, critically engage with the propensity of museums to act as sites for the production, transformation, and dissemina- tion of knowledge. In so doing, I explain the capacity of some museum objects to move across different regimes of value and realms of signification, while critically assessing the roles of museums in these pro- cesses—roles that are all the more consequential when, as in this case, objects are framed as ethno- graphic material and used to produce knowledge about other cultures. Along with this critique, I shed light on the political discourses in which indigenous material culture is entangled in contemporary Taiwan by considering the unique cultural density of the museum object, the Tao canoe. Taiwan is an ideal context for this analysis. Indige- nous movements aiming to promote indigenous rights gained momentum in Taiwan in the early 1990s. 1 As a result, and as part of a broader nation- building project, the Taiwanese government started to recognize and re-evaluate its ethnic and indigenous communities (Brown 2004:35; Ku 2012; Simon 2008; Varutti 2012). To date, 14 indigenous groups have received official recognition (the last in 2008), and several other groups are actively seeking recognition. The degree of visibility of indigenous groups in the Taiwanese national arena is to a significant extent dependent on the government composition: the pro- independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has been more active in producing pro-indigenous legislation than the more conservative, China-ori- ented Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Intriguingly, however, indigenous communities have until now largely supported the KMT in elections, possibly due to the perception of the KMT as a more stable govern- ment (Simon 2010:728, 731). 2 The representation of indigenous cultures in museums is politically and socially loaded, as muse- ums are a vehicle for the inclusion of indigenous communities in the national ethnoscape (Appadurai 2006:589). 3 Indigenous groups are gradually gaining visibility in the imaginary and narratives of the Tai- wanese nation through exhibitions such as the Legacy of the Pingpu Group, which was featured at the National Taiwan Museum in 2009–10 (see Varutti 2012) and explored the historical relationships between indigenous communities and Chinese set- tlers, as well as new museums, such as the National Museum of Taiwan History in Tainan (see Varutti museum anthropology Museum Anthropology, Vol. 37, Iss. 2, pp. 102–117 © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/muan.12056