Against and beyond the Museum
2022; Routledge; Volume: 36; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09528822.2022.2145049
ISSN1475-5297
Autores Tópico(s)Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
ResumoAbstractThis article considers the role of museums in contemporary and past formations of imperial knowledge and power, and the consequences of this role for the questions of accountability and restitution that have gained new prominence over the past few years. Departing from the view that matters of repatriation and restitution should privilege the terms of collection, this article instead examines the problem of colonial inheritance for museum collections as a whole, and for the museum as an institution. Further, it argues that the museum is an institutional form lacking in contemporary justification, this article proposes that the project for those who seek to ‘decolonise’ the museum must be to end the museum, and to imagine, in its place, new ways of relating to matters of memory and identity.Keywords: Alírio Karinamuseumsheritagerepatriationrestitutiondecolonisationlootthe post-museummuseum AcknowledgementsThis article has benefited from workshopping at an Archive and Public Culture Research Lab, from the engagement and attention of many colleagues and friends, and from the careful examination of an anonymous reviewer. Particular thanks are owed to Christian Alvarado, Kathleen Aston, Xafsa Ciise, Jade Delisle, Angel Dominguez, Carolyn Hamilton, Duane Jethro, Brendan Lidral-Porter, Sabelo Mcinziba, Susana Molins-Lliteras, Ettore Morelli, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, Ashleigh Sean Rolle, Katleho Kano Shoro and Carine Zaayman. In addition, financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF.Notes1 Vanda Vitali, ‘A Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum Is a Museum: Museums and Networks’, in Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez, eds, Remix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the Americas, University of California Press, Oakland, 2016, p 1002 Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, Drew S Burk, trans, Ministère de la Culture, Paris, 2018 (otherwise known as the Sarr–Savoy Report). My article takes this publication as a starting point, perhaps at times to the point of restating some of its claims, but with some key points of departure that will become evident, among them a divergence with its digitisation proposal, which allows French institutions to retain intellectual authority over digital material while the open access policy cedes the possibility of pulling material out of circulation. See Mathilde Pavis and Andrea Wallace, ‘Response to the 2018 Sarr–Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access Relevant to the Digitization and Restitution of African Cultural Heritage and Associated Materials’, Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-commerce Law (JIPITEC) 29, vol 10, no 2, 2019, p 115. More broadly, however, a proposal of this article is that we dwell on what the Sarr–Savoy Report insists is a present impossibility – the return of everything, regardless of the specific terms of its appropriation. Thus it considers something beyond the scope of the report: the problem of imagining the end of the museum, and of imagining what might succeed it.3 V Y Mudimbe, ‘Which Idea of Africa?’, The Idea of Africa, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1994, pp 38–70, p 644 See Ciraj Rassool, ‘Re-storing the Skeletons of Empire: Return, Reburial and Rehumanisation in Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol 41, no 3, 2015, pp 653–670; Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2012; Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B Phillips, ‘Our (Museum) World Turned Upside Down: Re-presenting Native American Arts’, in Donald Preziosi and Claire Fraago, eds, Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum, Routledge, London, 2004, part VI, chapter 7; Rachael Minott, ‘The Past is Now: Confronting Museums’ Complicity in Imperial Celebration’, Third Text 159–160, vol 33, issues 4–5, July–September 2019, pp 559–574; Nanette Snoep, ‘Suggestions for a Post-museum’, and Wayne Modest, ‘Museums Are Investments in Critical Discomfort’, in Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, eds, Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2020, pp 325–335 and pp 65–74 respectively.5 Decolonisation’s current association with a ‘culture war’ reflects broader conservatisms, including those of museum scholars and professionals. See Andrew Lawler, ‘Grave Disputes’, Science, vol 330, no 6001, 2010, pp 166–170; and, as an exemplar, the work of Tiffany Jenkins and most recently her Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the past Ended Up in Museums… and Why They Should Stay There, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018.6 This interest, in lay and specialised instantiations, makes considerable use of museums’ ability to criticise colonial history. See for example Colin Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy, and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology, Duckworth, London, 2000; Louise Tythacott, The Lives of Chinese Objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and Display, Berghahn, New York, 2011; and Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, Pluto Press, London, 2020. A concern with loot and other illicit modes of acquisition (eg such that restitution might be justified not by the inherent quality of a given object but by the provable or probable wrongness of its collection) also shapes the Sarr–Savoy Report, which, however, insists on a very broad definition of what such illicit acquisition might look like.7 Anemona Hartocollis, ‘Images of Slaves Are Property of Harvard, Not a Descendant, Judge Rules’, New York Times, 4 March 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/us/harvard-slave-photos-renty.html, accessed 1 July 20218 Robert Aldrich, ‘Colonial Museums in a Postcolonial Europe’, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, vol 2, no 2, 2009, pp 137–1569 And which, as Alice Conklin argued, was not without political motivation. See Alice L Conklin, In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2013.10 See Modest, ‘Museums Are Investments in Critical Discomfort’, op cit11 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, Routledge, London, 1994; Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, Routledge, London, 199212 Cynthia Kros, ‘Tainted Heritage? The Case of the Branly Museum’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol 20, no 7–8, 2014, pp 834–85013 Snoep, ‘Suggestions for a Post-museum’, op cit14 Nicholas Mirzoeff, ‘Empty the Museum, Decolonize the Curriculum, Open Theory’, Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, vol 25, no 53, 2017, p 1615 The vast gulf between what ‘decolonisation’ should mean for a museum and what takes place in its name is addressed in John Giblin, Imma Ramos and Nikki Grout, ‘Dismantling the Master’s House: Thoughts on Representing Empire and Decolonising Museums and Public Spaces in Practice – An Introduction’, Third Text 159–160, vol 33, issues 4–5, July–September 2019, pp 471–486; and Dónal Hassett, ‘Acknowledging or Occluding “The System of Violence”?: The Representation of Colonial Pasts and Presents in Belgium’s AfricaMuseum’, Journal of Genocide Research, vol 22, no 1, 2020, pp 26–45.16 Manthia Diawara, ‘Lettre d’Afrique à Macron: La réparation plutôt que la restitution!’ (‘Letter from Africa to Macron: Reparations rather than Restitution’), Mediapart, 16 December 2019, https://blogs.mediapart.fr/edition/les-invites-de-mediapart/article/161219/lettre-d-afrique-macron-la-reparation-plutot-que-la-restitution, accessed 10 December 202017 See Gabriel Moshenska, ‘Creating a Museum of British Colonialism’, Jalada Africa, 4 December 2020, https://jaladaafrica.org/2020/12/04/creating-a-museum-of-british-colonialism-by-gabriel-moshenska/, accessed 10 December 202018 See Denise Ferreira da Silva, Unpayable Debt, Sternberg Press, London, 202219 See for example Nancy Marie Mithlo, ‘“Red Man’s Burden”: The Politics of Inclusion in Museum Settings’, American Indian Quarterly, vol 28, nos 3–4, 2004, pp 743–763; and Timothy W Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 200220 See Patricia Pierce Erikson, ‘Decolonizing the Nation’s Attic: The NMAI and the Politics of Knowledge-making in a National Space’, in Amy Lonetree and Amanda J Cobb, eds, The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2008, pp 43–83
Referência(s)