Debates

Ciraj Rassool Bénédicte Savoy

05/12/23

2018-2023. 5 Years of Making and Debating Restitution

Cologne Crossroads Conversation Nr.1 mit Bénédicte Savoy (Berlin) und Ciraj Rassool (Kapstadt)

Das Gespräch wird zweisprachig geführt (englisch/deutsch) und kann am 6. Dezember 2023 um 18 Uhr hier live gesehen werden: Die Gesellschaften des globalen Südens kämpfen seit über 100 Jahren für die Rückgabe entzogener und geraubter Kulturgüter und menschlicher Gebeine, die in Europa aufbewahrt und erforscht werden. Mit der Rede des französischen Staatspräsidenten Emmanuel Macron […]

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Anna Brus Martin Zillinger

25/10/22

Introduction: Transforming the Post/Colonial Museum

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

The Post/Colonial Museum. Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, 2022. ISBN: 978-3-8376-5397-7. Covergraphik Post-Museen, Anna Habaschy aka Minaechx Much has been said in recent years about the colonial origin and enduring legacy of former “anthropological” or imperial museums. Programmatic attempts to decolonize them by opening up (Snoep 2020, 2021), worlding (Modest et al. 2019, de Cesari et al. 2020), […]

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Catarina Simão

25/10/22

Evidence and Fiction: An Untimely Alliance with the Photography Archive of Margot Dias and Jorge Dias

The work of the Portuguese ethnologist António Jorge Dias (Porto, 31 July 1907 – Lisbon, 1973) and his wife and collaborator Margot Dias (Nuremberg, 4 June 1908 – Oeiras, 2003), a German national, important also for its sheer volume, produced a very abundant quantity of archival materials. Nevertheless, Portuguese anthropology’s history has assessed the work […]

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Bernard Mueller

18/10/22

The ›Mystery‹ of the Konkomba’s Severed Thumbs: Historical Fact, Colonial Rumour or Legend of the Defeated?

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

»Forgetting and remembering are equally inventive.« Jorge Luis Borges (1970) The former ethnographic museum could reinvent itself by exhibiting not only objects but also stories. It is important to allow for anti-colonial resistance to be expressed in a variety of forms, in which the biographical dimension of the narrators is to be taken into consideration. […]

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11/10/22

Trafficking Vague Cosmological Boundaries: Towards Knowing Experiential Relationality in Museum Epistemics

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

This article seeks inspiration in engaging with African art works displayed amongst sculptures and paintings from European pasts in Berlin’s Bode Museum 2017–2019. Concepts at play in designing that exhibition, deriving from both history and philosophy of art and anthropology, expressed a modern spacetime cosmology. As is the modern way, it focussed on what it […]

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Richard Tsogang Fossi

11/10/22

Eugen Zintgraff’s Diary as a Document of Theft and Destruction of Art Treasures in the Colonial Context

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

Eugen Zintgraff (1858/Düsseldorf – 1897/Tenerife) was a ›prominent‹ explorer in the early years of German colonization of Cameroon (Nkui Nchoji 1989), whose name is deeply rooted in the local collective or grassroots memory (Tsogang Fossi 2019). It is also linked to many cultural or zoological objects as well as human remains, namely skulls, currently in […]

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27/09/22

Problematic Museum Heritage in a Postcolonial Context: The Case of the Moto Moto Museum Chisungu Collection

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

Introduction Chisungu is a female puberty initiation ceremony practiced by most ethnic groups in Zambia, but predominantly by the Bemba of Northern Zambia. While these rites are still practiced in some form today, their nature and conduct is significantly different from which was observed and recorded by anthropologists and missionaries during the colonial period.[1] During […]

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Lynn Abrahams Paul Tichmann

20/09/22

Challenges of Re-Writing the Iziko Ethnographic Collections Archives: Some Lessons from the Khomani San/Bushmen Engagement

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

The authors of this article are both museum professionals within the Iziko Museums and as such have come to inherit the ›skeletons in the cupboard‹. We would prefer to believe that, having been active participants in the struggle against apartheid and wrestling with issues of identity in post-apartheid South Africa, we have a critical approach […]

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Nelson Adebo Abiti

13/09/22

The Uganda Museum’s Tribal Representation: Colonial Repositories and Community Reconciliation in Uganda

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

Introduction Colonial rule in Uganda introduced classifications of so-called ›tribal‹ groups to enforce British administrative units. The idea or imagination of the ›imperial‹ implemented by the British colonial government included exhibitions of ›tribal crafts‹ in the Uganda Museum. While such exhibitions and displays divided the population into ›tribes‹ for the convenience of the British, the […]

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06/09/22

The Museums of Black Civilisations, between History and Utopia

DCNtR Debate #3. The Post/Colonial Museum

Introduction The idealisation of the Musée des Civilisations Noires (Museum of Black Civilizations, MCN) is attributed to Senegalese activist Lamine Senghor (1889–1927). It was in 1926, with the creation of the Comité de Défense de la Race Nègre (CDRN)[1] that the pan-African luminary firstly mentioned a museum for the preservation of African dignity and heritage. […]

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