O caso dos museus espíritas: iconicidade do imaginário na midiatização

Abstract

This thesis investigates the circulation of the imaginary in mediatization based on the case of spiritist museums. Little is said about image in the context of spiritism, but an iconicity arises with the urgency of preserving the symbolism of this religiosity established just over 170 years ago in a society transformed by media processes. Starting from evidence about the musealization of spiritism, the objective is to investigate how spiritist museum practices elaborate a relationship of iconicity in mediatization. This qualitative and exploratory research is based on the idea of a mediatized case study, by means of a survey and visitation in a circuit constituted by 27 spiritist museums, carrying out 17 in-depth interviews and the production of and collecting photographs and images. The analysis is structured in two parts, offering a cartography and a dynamogram on the experience of images in circulation from spiritist museums, according to their possibilities and challenges in mediatization. In the first one, we elaborated a cartography of the practices, recognizing, in each initiative, the mediatized museum practices, their operations and their symptoms. In the second part, we seek to be guided by the anachronism of the images to explore the circulation of the imaginary through a methodological exercise with image boards. It is our intention to propose this methodological work at the intersection between the studies of the imaginary and mediatization. Relating to museum practices and the iconicity expressed in them, we will propose that mediatization has been mobilizing a kind of iconic turn in spiritism, a doctrine that, for the first time, seems to develop a thought about its images. The case studied stresses theorizations about mediatization and the imaginary based on empirical observation and dialogues, based on Communication Sciences, with Museology, Social Research on Spiritualism and Studies of the Imaginary, contributing to the understanding of unexplored interfaces.