Michi Knecht

04/05/21
To ‘Decenter’, You Need an Ethics of Dissensus
What does the idea of “decentering” ethnographic museums entail from the perspective of an empirical philosopher, STS-researcher and postcolonial knowledge worker? Helen Verran talks with Michi Knecht about acknowledging incompatibilities beyond universalist claims and “objects before classification” as starting points. Museums, as potential sites of the multiverse, need to seriously cultivate a culture of dissent […]

10/10/17
The Frogs Croaked Cleverly, but the Cows Continue Drinking Water from the Pond
On the Panel Discussion “Shared Heritage? Colonial Knowledge in History and the Present” at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology, September 26, 2017
© Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg. Photos: Arne Bosselmann The 205 seats of the patina-covered, large lecture hall of Hamburg’s Museum of Ethnology (Hamburger Völkerkundemuseum), built in 1912, with its all-around wood paneling, must have seldom been occupied to the last seat in recent years.[1] At the same time, more than 80 people who were no […]

03/10/17
How to move on with Humboldt’s legacy?
Re-thinking ethnographic collections
The Humboldt Forum, which is currently being built in the middle of Berlin within the walls of the reconstructed Prussian Berlin Palace and will be hosting the collections of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin from 2018, has become a focal point for debates on these matters in Germany. With the withdrawal of art historian Bénédicte Savoy […]