Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how visual reconstructions of the first ‘missing link’ species, Pithecanthropus erectus (‘Java Man’), discovered in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) contribute to the racialised, othering gaze of formerly colonised peoples in purportedly objective scientific representations.

Paper long abstract:

Between 1891-1892, Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois discovered what was considered as the first ‘missing link’ species between humans and apes in the Dutch East Indies, presently Indonesia. The discovery of a molar, a skullcap, and a femur were attributed to a new species named Pithecanthropus erectus, colloquially, ‘Java Man’. Despite scant physical evidence, dozens of visual reconstructions emerged from his discovery. These images informed physical reconstructions exhibited in museums across Europe, the UK, and the US, each displaying widely varied physical characteristics. However, what were purported to be scientific renderings, actually arose from an amalgamation of racial and social stereotypes, informed by Social Darwinism, early anthropology/ethnology, and older racialised imaginings of bestial humans and chimaeras from foreign lands. Pithecanthropus’ status in the early 19th century as the first pre-Homo sapiens species discovered outside of Europe conflated it with notions of degenerate non-European races. Java Man’s fraught origins from a Dutch colony, enabled by mechanisms of colonial exploitation, further complicates these visual reconstructions. The latest of these, unveiled in 2019 in Leiden’s Naturalis museum, is a coquettish, sexualised dark-skinned woman, whose “shy smile” accompanies the original bones which the Indonesian government has requested to be repatriated (Naturalis website). While visual and museum anthropologists have long considered the implications of the "othering" gaze in ethnographic displays of extant communities, it is crucial to also consider how formerly colonised nations are “othered” even within their prehistory, as this practice continues today and actively shapes how we understand our shared human history.

Paper short abstract:

To speak of the Other is to speak of colonialism, power, Western hegemony and knowledge production. The Other is the epistemic category through which the ethnographic subject is studied. This paper gives a history of the anthropologist Self and its making and remaking of the anthropological Other.

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on how meanings of the categories of Self and the Other have emerged, morphed and continually transform in the disciplinary history of anthropology. In this context, these categories do not have fixed epistemical lineage and the paper will show the trajectory of the anthropological construction of the Other. Classical anthropology is filled with the object of study of the ‘Native’, ‘Savage’, and ‘Primitive’ which are the terms and more general ways of studying and perceiving what/who we know as the ‘Other’. However, in contemporary anthropology, the connotation of the Other is radically transformed and reoriented. I intend to argue that the anthropological gaze on race, class, gender, question of who is the native, etc all fall into this reorientation of the category of the Other. The paper begins with an examination of the ways in which this anthropological Other is analyzed as the object of study and how who becomes the Other and then I turn to an exploration of the ways in which the category of the ‘Other’ is critically looked at and dissolved into the decolonial conceptions of the anthropological subject beyond its inherent (original colonial gaze) of Othering but also in many ways continues to Other through its neocolonial-neoliberal-neofeudal gaze.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how UK museums, such as the Pitt Rivers Museum, portrayed displacement during the European refugee crisis. Analyzing ethnographic gaze and colonial legacies within the museum,it discusses the ethical dimensions of knowledge transmission in ethnographic museums regarding refugees.

Paper long abstract:

In the wake of the refugee 'crisis' in Europe from 2013 onwards, discussions surrounding asylum, migration, and displacement gained widespread attention. Museums actively participated in this discourse, delving into narratives that explored the motivations behind the Mediterranean crossings while also presenting a sympathetic image of the refugee to the public. However, despite their efforts to foster understanding, the refugee, asylum seeker, and the displaced person were consistently framed as the 'other'—perpetual outsiders in a state of crisis, resembling Agamben's concept of homo sacer. This representation, though more sympathetic than other public discourses, tended to be one-dimensional, failing to capture the complexity of the refugee experience.

This paper scrutinizes the approaches taken by UK museums, particularly the Pitt Rivers Museum, in engaging with displacement. It examines how the 'ethnographic gaze' persisted in representations of refugees, even when the intent was to encourage a more compassionate dialogue. The paper draws connections between this gaze and the colonial past of ethnographic museums, emphasizing the legacy of othering in such institutions. Additionally, it explores the museum's efforts to move beyond these limitations, spotlighting initiatives like the MultakaOxford project. The strengths and weaknesses of engaging with asylum seekers within the colonial space of the museum are also discussed. This paper ultimately aims to question the ethics of knowledge transmission (or lack thereof) in ethnographic museums, examining the enduring remnants of the othering gaze within such spaces in relation to the refugee.

Paper short abstract:

A citizen science project of the CNR-ILIESI, in collaboration with the Italian public institutions that preserve and disseminate the colonial heritage, aimed to define new methodologies for communicating the history of Italy's colonial heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In 2021, the Italian Minister of Culture created, for the first time, a working group to study issues related to colonial collections. The consequence of this delay is that today anthropologists, sociologists, historians, artists, writers, musicians, activists and members of local communities are called upon to fill the gaps left by politics. In this context, in 2023 my research institution, the CNR-ILIESI, launched a project and a scientific collaboration agreement, of which I am the scientific coordinator, with the Italian public institutions that preserve the heritage of the colonial period, which aims to answer a series of questions that can no longer be neglected: how were colonial collections acquired? what is the history of these collection campaigns? in what political conditions did they take place? What is the relationship between museum institutions and colonial collections? Has the colonial experience influenced both the scientific lexicon and the ethnographic gaze of the Italian ethno-anthropological disciplines born between 1800 and 1900?

The ultimate goal of the project, and its educational activities, is to define new methodologies for telling the story of Italian colonial collections. The innovative aspect of the project is that it takes into account not only the colonial objects preserved in Italian museums, but also the archival heritage, which often preserves documents that are not easily accessible to the public, in a cross-analysis approach and with the active participation of citizens.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will reflect on the staging of the ethnographic gaze within the “epistemological technology” (Preziosi) that is presented by the current exhibition of the Africa Galleries at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

Paper long abstract:

The museum apparatus does not simply exhibit ethnographic objects, but stages the ethnographic as its own object (even if hidden in plain sight), as its “epistemological technology” (Preziosi, 2006: 75) reproduces a supposed knowledge by means of, precisely, exhibitions. Making this a visible concern of and for ethnographic (or museological) enquiry has often been done by employing artists to make (temporary) “interventions” (as by Fred Wilson) – where, nonetheless, curatorial understanding of the institution remains largely unaffected. In this presentation, I explore ongoing debate at the Humboldt Forum’s Africa Galleries – at least, that aspect which is staged publicly. At one end of the current exhibition, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ film, "Les Statues Meurent Aussi", plays on a loop, exemplifying the anthropological heritage that Marc Augé called its “double relativity” (“for, as we know, others also define what is for them ‘the other’” [1998: xvi]); and, at the other end, there is a gallery addressing the ethics of photography (as an instance of the gaze in ethnography), under the indicative curatorial title “omissions”. The distinctly temporary feel of these galleries – with questions concerning how and why (and for whom) the museum’s Benin artefacts are “presented” in the rooms in-between – testifies to an unravelling of the Humboldt Forum’s “mission” as a so-called World Museum. Intended for a global tourist gaze (“edutainment”) this is challenged here, becoming an object of and for theoretical reflection (Lippard, 1999) in the ostensibly paradoxical project of a (potentially) decolonial curatorial practice (Mignolo, 2011).