1st Edition

The Postcolonial Museum The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History

    274 Pages
    by Routledge

    274 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book examines how we can conceive of a ’postcolonial museum’ in the contemporary epoch of mass migrations, the internet and digital technologies. The authors consider the museum space, practices and institutions in the light of repressed histories, sounds, voices, images, memories, bodies, expression and cultures. Focusing on the transformation of museums as cultural spaces, rather than physical places, is to propose a living archive formed through creation, participation, production and innovation. The aim is to propose a critical assessment of the museum in the light of those transcultural and global migratory movements that challenge the historical and traditional frames of Occidental thought. This involves a search for new strategies and critical approaches in the fields of museum and heritage studies which will renew and extend understandings of European citizenship and result in an inevitable re-evaluation of the concept of ’modernity’ in a so-called globalised and multicultural world.

    Acknowledgements, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona, Michaela Quadraro; Part I Global Migrations, Transcultural Heritage; Chapter 1 A Museum Without Objects, Françoise Vergès; Chapter 2 Decolonising National Museums of Ethnography in Europe: Exposing and Reshaping Colonial Heritage (2000–2012), Felicity Bodenstein, Camilla Pagani; Chapter 3 Colonial Spaces, Postcolonial Narratives: The Exhibitionary Landscape of Fort Cochin in India, Neelima Jeychandran; Chapter 4 Ethnographic Museums: From Colonial Exposition to Intercultural Dialogue, Fabienne Boursiquot; Part II Artistic Incursions in Space and Time; Chapter 5 ‘There is Not Yet a World’, Ebadur Rahman; Chapter 6 The Artist as Interlocutor and the Labour of Memory, Mihaela Brebenel, Christopher Collier, Joanna Figiel; Chapter 7 Performance in the Museum Space (for a Wandering Society), Margherita Parati; Part III Disorienting the Museum; Chapter 8 Museo Diffuso: Performing Memory in Public Spaces, Viviana Gravano; Chapter 9 Mining the Museum in an Age of Migration, Anne Ring Petersen; Chapter 10 Blurring History: The Central European Museum and the Schizophrenia of Capital, Ivan Jurica; Chapter 11 The Limits to Institutional Change: Organisational Roles and Roots, Peggy Levitt; Part IV Representation and Beyond; Chapter 12 The Incurable Image: Curation and Repetition on a Tri-continental Scene, Tarek Elhaik; Chapter 13 The Postcolonial ‘Exhibitionary Complex’: The Role of the International Expo in Migrating and Multicultural Societies, Stefania Zuliani; Chapter 14 Orientalism and the Politics of Contemporary Art Exhibitions, Alessandra Marino; Chapter 15 What Museum for Africa?, Itala Vivan; Part V Future Memories, Alternative Archives; Chapter 16 Egyptian Chemistry: From Postcolonial to Post-humanist Matters, Ursula Biemann; Chapter 17 ‘The Lived Moment’: New Aesthetics for Migrant Recollection, Peter Leese; Chapter 18 Coding/Decoding the Archive, David Gauthier, Erin La Cour; afterword Afterword: After the Museum, Iain Chambers;

    Biography

    Iain Chambers, Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona and Michaela Quadraro, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L’Orientale', Italy.

    ’Long overdue, here is a volume that updates and reconfigures the intersection of postcolonial critique with multiple interpretations of the museum and social praxis in globalisation. The Postcolonial Museum charts gaps, achievements and prospects in 20 chapters that re-interpret the connection of past and current imperialisms. Introducing a wealth of new voices, this is essential reading for anyone interested in curatorial practice and theory, modern and contemporary art, ethnography, museology and the interventionist potential of research in the humanities overall.’ Angela Dimitrakaki, University of Edinburgh, UK 'The Postcolonial Museum as a whole decidedly fills a desideratum in the field of contemporary arts and museology, as it illustrates critical aspects of artistic production, circulation and reception across the world, and above all entwines transcultural and transnational encounters in the age of globalization. Testimony. Between History and Memory