ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Recursos ideológicos del Estado mexicano: el caso de la arqueología, a paper by Ignacio Rodríguez, in which the author demonstrates, in an almost schematic fashion, the discursive strategy of many texts. It concerns the idea that the museum and scientific discipline are not the same, that the contents of the former are not a mirrored reflection of the discussion that has taken place in the scholarly sphere. The chapter argues that first Natural History Cabinet, a private museum, open to the public to foster its education and supported by the imperial authority, constitutes a matrix over which archaeological and ethnographical layers would later be superimposed. Bennett shows how modernity was construed in natural history museums, how social spaces worked as a 'laboratory' in which the disciplines were in charge of providing the necessary context to build a new past.
