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- Convenors:
-
Lisette Jong
(University of Amsterdam)
Amade Aouatef M'charek (University of Amsterdam)
Paul Wolff Mitchell (University of Amsterdam)
Laurens de Rooy (Amsterdam University Medical Centre)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
The panel queries multiple modes of valuing colonial objects, including care and active neglect. We engage with what colonial matters can teach us about past and present practices of knowledge production in institutional contexts as well as reflect on STS research practices around colonial matters.
Long Abstract:
Many institutions of knowledge production, such as museums and universities, are confronted with the haunting presence of colonial matters. These include human remains, objects of art, material culture and natural history. But the same in fact holds for academic curricula and research methods, for example in the disciplines of anthropology and archeology. Demands for change in how we relate, exhibit, or teach about such objects, as well as demands for restitution or reparations have shifted the registers of valuation (Heuts & Mol 2013) around colonial matters.
In this panel we query multiple modes of valuing colonial objects within different contexts. Crucially, the practices of valuing we examine do not only entail care in the collecting, categorizing, storing, maintaining and display of objects. Given the perpetual violence involved in holding these objects, we also want to attend to active neglect as a form of valuation. Meanwhile, new modes of engagement, such as provenance research, artistic practice and novel scientific methods, spur transformations of colonial matters.
We invite papers that engage with what colonial matters can teach us about past and present practices of knowledge production in institutional contexts, as well as papers that reflect on STS research practices of studying colonial matters. In this panel we aim for a conversation about how we can work with colonial matters in anticolonial ways (Liboiron 2021) that do not reproduce the patterns of (epistemic) violence from the past.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paul Wolff Mitchell (University of Amsterdam)
Short abstract:
This paper concerns how an intentional and strategic "politics of disarticulation" made "bodies without history" in the face of resistance and protest by kin and (descendant) communities in 18-19th c. anatomical collections, with implications for contemporary valuations of human remains in museums.
Long abstract:
Historical anatomical collections are increasingly subject to calls to empower descendant communities to decide the fate of ancestral remains, or to calls to honor known or presumed wishes of deceased individuals regarding their bodies. However, records of human remains in publications, catalogues, and museum documentation are often missing, sparse, or vague – although exceptional cases contain detailed information on the identity of those whose remains were collected and how they got there. I argue that some disparities in documentation of historical anatomical collections in the late 18th and 19th centuries in the U.S.A., U.K., and northern continental Europe are traces of a “politics of disarticulation”, processes actively and strategically detaching dead bodies from identities and social relations. Here I document the intentional concealment or distortion by anatomical collectors of the identities of the remains they collected in the face of resistance or protest from the deceased’s kin or community, manifest both in “anatomy riots” proximate to medical schools and in acts of resistance by Indigenous communities to colonial graverobbing. The cases examined here demonstrate how power relations influenced what information anatomical collectors recorded and published, urging a critical and contextual reading of documentation of anatomical collections, and showing how the documentary anonymity of these remains is by design. I will conclude with reflections on how this history of the ethical and political stakes of disarticulating identities from bodies in anatomical collections bears upon present calls for reevaluating the status of human remains in museum and university collections.
Thiago Pinto Barbosa (University of Göttingen)
Long abstract:
This paper examines the persistent tensions regarding the haunting presence of human skulls and other remains obtained in colonial contexts. Taking the terminological shift from “human” to “ancestral” remains as a point of departure, I analyse ethical and political discussions on how to deal with this matter with a focus on two cases. The first concerns artistic and historiographic engagements with the presence of skulls obtained by Swiss scientists in Ceylon (today Sri Lanka) and now scattered in European archives. I examine the historical transcolonial networks that made such plundering possible as well as a current artistic intervention that addresses the haunting of those skulls’ materiality while articulating the importance of restitution. The second case concerns an episode in which restitution was not possible, as a stakeholder commission formed by likely descendants decided against the further provenance research on the found human/ancestral remains that were associated with the collection of a former center for race research in Berlin. I examine how, in this case, the ghosts of that history of violent extraction of human remains in the name of science were put at rest through a memorialization process, even though ancestrality/origin lines could not be established. Further, I theorize on hauntology as a mode of engagement with temporality and affect vis-à-vis colonial legacies in science. My goal is to tackle the questions: How can the troubling ghosts of racial anthropology be laid to peaceful rest? And how could reparation be achieved when restitution of remains is not possible?
Hansjörg Dilger (Freie Universität Berlin)
Long abstract:
Recent public debates on the coloniality of ethnographic collections have had a transformative impact on anthropological museums in Northern Europe. In particular, these dynamics have been aligned with the reformulation of institutional (self-)imaginaries that seek to involve 'communities' and 'societies of origin' in exploring the histories and determining the futures of ethnographic collections. However, these institutional openings have also become a window of opportunity for a wide range of actors from the contexts from which these objects were taken to actively shape this process; and to become involved as key actors in the making of political and/or institutional decisions.
In my paper, I explore the ambiguous dynamics that public pressure and institutional aspirations to transform museum practices in the wake of the promise of decolonisation have created in the case of the Ethnological Museum Berlin. By focusing on recent instances of collaboration with communities and societies of origin, and especially the case of the Ngonnso’ statue from Cameroon, I show that activist actors and groups have played a crucial role in transforming object-related representations and practices within the museum itself. At the same time, the emerging collaborations are marked by ambiguity, as more consistent – and especially structurally embedded – ways of dealing with the demands and expectations of the individuals and groups involved are caught up in institutional hierarchies and contradictions, as well as the continued dependence of all collaborations on institutional resources and goodwill, both in the countries where these objects are hosted and from where they originate.
Lisette Jong (University of Amsterdam)
Long abstract:
The anatomy museum Vrolik in the Amsterdam Academic Medial Center, houses the remains of many human and non-human primates. Amongst them 14 skulls of gorillas taken from the region where the Kadeï flows into the Sangha river in Congo in the early 20th century under French colonization. In Paris the skulls were prepared to show dental development in gorillas from juvenile to adult. Dutch anatomist Lodewijk Bolk started to amass gorilla skulls after 1919 and bought the series from trading house Tramond-Rouppert in 1925. Bolk considered it a valuable addition to the collection, not only for his own work on evolution. In funding requests to the municipality of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University Association, Bolk anticipated the extinction of the gorilla and envisioned that a large and interesting collection of gorilla skulls would increase in scientific and monetary value over time to become a great future asset to the university. Gorillas did not go extinct and today the chimpanzee and bonobo, instead of the gorilla as Bolk believed, are considered the closest to human primates based on genetics and became key figures in human evolution science. In the past decades, no researcher has shown interest in the skulls on the shelves in the museum depot. Until they were enrolled in my research into colonialism and scientific practices, focused on the remains of great apes in institutions. In this presentation I explore what the 14 skulls, as (de)valued colonial matters, can teach us about past and present practices of knowledge production.
Tahani Nadim (Humboldt University Berlin) Roos Hopman (Humboldt University Berlin)
Long abstract:
In this paper we attend to modes of valuing nature in conservation practices and logics, and how these invite thinking on colonial matters. Conservation, “protecting species from extinction”, describes a central practice and commitment in the natural history museum, where physical, digital, and chemical interventions keep specimens from “deteriorating” (further) while the preservation of collections is posited as a moral imperative. Conservation is also about reproducing and keeping endangered animals alive through protected areas, national parks and zoos as well as by means of advanced reproductive technologies. This represents a historical and a global effort that mobilizes research institutions, NGOs, venture capitalists, cell cultures, species boundaries, frozen sperm, guns and gala dinners. In both cases, conservation is posed as a solution to environmental crisis and biodiversity loss and, in both cases, colonial histories continue to shape its political economy. In this paper we compare these conservation practices in order to assemble different colonial matters and trace patterns of protection and neglect. In a first step, we pay attention to how colonial matters become (dis)articulated within conservation regimes. In a second step, we examine the modes of valuing attached to (and generative of) these matters: Who/what is being protected through military personnel? How is digital reproduction and accessibility linked to decolonizing collections? Drawing on our research and experiences in the institutional context of the museum we also reflect on research studying (alongside) colonial matters, focusing on frustration and inheritances.
Magda Ribeiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Long abstract:
The paper intends to explore some recent strategies by the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura to bring science and technology to Amazonian population as a way of emancipating traditional communities through valuing nature. In previous research, I analyzed more than 10 years of Natura's relationship with a Brazilian nut gatherers community located in the Iratapuru river, Brazilian Amazon. In this research, I reflect on more recent company's strategies: i) the creation of the Natura Amazônia innovation centre and ii) the creation of the Ecoparque, a technology centre in the middle of the forest to research Amazonian botanical assets. The analysis develops by considering the ethical and ontological presuppositions that guide the ascription of valuing nature through science and technology. Valuation are performed by highly complex socio-technical orderings involving several actors, expertise and instruments. I ask what happens when different regimes of valuation meet? What are the consequences of valuing nature and the lives of Amazonian communities through scientific and technological research for industrial purposes? Often understood as a new form for colonization, the entry of scientific and technological investments into the forest advocates the emancipation of Amazonian assets and their populations. However, the distinct ontological assumptions of their ways of life point to various dilemmas in the study of contexts involving colonial matters in countries that have historically been at the service of expropriation and destruction.