Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a critical look at museum labelling strategies as perpetuating colonial concepts of Africa. And aims to put forward strategies to decolonise museum practice through labelling.

Paper long abstract:

As museums across Europe undertake to transform their displays of African material culture much concern has rightly been given to how a display can be used as a tool to explore colonial histories. But often the use of language in displays can fall by the wayside. In this paper I propose a rethinking of museum labels as subject to the geopolitics of knowledge. Prominent decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo's arguments for an understanding of knowledge as being tied to the geographic and the political offers a critical lens with which to unpack the labelling strategies of museums, and in particular their grasp of the cultural heterogeneity of Africa as a continent in constant flux. Impositions of the ethnographic present in labelling, however modernised the display, impacts on the viewers engagement with displays of African material culture. And for a museum to truly decolonise its displays the labelling must be viewed as essential to transformation. By studying the labelling strategies of African material culture at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British Museum in London, museums employing vastly different display methodologies, I aim to show how language still based in empire perpetuates a view of a timeless homogenous Africa. I therefore argue that labelling strategies should become a main aspect of attempts at decolonisation and not supplementary to it.