Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Examining post-colonial tensions around human/ancestral remains in European archives, this paper applies hauntological lenses to analyze racial scientific legacies and reparation approaches in two cases where restitution and memorialization were at stake.

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?