For Ruth B. Phillips, the museum functions as a 'diagnostic' device for 'Western modernity' as it progressively displaces the religious sphere as the domain of art.1 In its place is erected a monument to secularism, the establishment of the nation state and the domination of indigenous people. This is the backdrop she draws for her polemical article "A Proper Place for Art or the Proper Arts of Place? Native North American Objects and the Hierarchies of Art, Craft, and Souvenir." From her first sentences, Phillips spells out the ideological claim she's staking. Note that she uncritically naturalizes 'indigenous systems of spirituality, expressive culture, and value' while insisting on the artificial quality of 'idealist notions of art and scientific paradigms of objecthood'.2 In effect, 'Western' could be understood in her lexicon as artifice, variously regarded as a 'mystification' and 'commoditization' process. Therefore, when she comes to speak of cultural hybridization, a substantial part of what she is insisting on is the entrance of a previously non-capitalist culture into the international market. What her article struggles with is the nature of this reterritorialization.
