Emotions in the Museum of Medicine. An investigation of how museum educators employ emotions and what these emotions do

The aim of this paper is to explore how museum educators employ emotionswhen they are doing guided tours and to investigate what theseemotions do. The paper explores five guided tours in the Museum ofMedicine (Uppsala, Sweden) located in the former Ulleråker psychiatrichospital and asylum. The guided tours take place in the exhibitions focusingon surgery, nursing and mental care, but this paper focuses on guided tourin the exhibition displaying mental care. The guided tours were filmed anddocumented using participant observation. The material is analysed withthe help of Sara Ahmed’s queer-feminist phenomenological approach toemotions. The paper shows that themuseum educators used amultitude ofemotions to orient the students’ emotional experiences and their knowledgeabout mental care and mental illness. Emotional restraint, fear, antipathyand sympathy were expressed in relation to patients, and thiscontributed to an othering of patients. The depiction of patients was usedto express empathy in relation to caretakers. The study reveals that theappropriation of emotions works along sanist norms that largely contributeto a further marginalisation of patients. The paper, therefore, calls fora further examination of sanist norms in cultural heritage productions.