Between Universalism and Repatriation

Project Description:

In the Spring of 2024, I had the privilege of studying abroad with Colorado College. I traveled to Toulouse, France with the sociology department to further explore French society, that is, how France’s history shapes its present political reality. Having studied logics of colonialism and theories of decoloniality at Colorado College, my focus for this venture grant was on France’s historical legacy as a significant colonial power. I was, and continue to be, interested in France’s status as an intellectual hub of the western world, and my venture grant sought to understand how such “intellect” or knowledge is displayed and conveyed to visitors and residents alike. As such, my inquiry directed me towards museums; a site where knowledge and culture in the form of material objects are accumulated to be displayed to visitors. Given that the European colonial project was one which sought to eradicate and displace non-western forms of meaning-making and knowledge production, it is unsurprising that objects of great significance to France’s colonial victims (exe: what is now known as Algeria, the United States, Senegal, etc.) have been uprooted/stolen from their geographies of origin and held in France’s museums in order to showcase, or provide rationale to, France’s power as a nation-state. France, however, differs from much of the Western world, in that France’s political leadership has acknowledged how its colonial past produces France as a museum hub for tourists and residents alike. Furthermore, French political/intellectual elite have given some attention to decades-long calls to repatriate, that is, to return stolen objects to their geographies of origin. With such a historical and contemporary understanding in mind, my venture grant sought to understand what political, institutional, and mental gaps exist between public displays which acknowledge the violence intrinsic to France’s historical status as a colonial power and the physical process that comprises reparations and the repatriation of stolen objects. As such, I hold that because the function of a museum is to store and display objects, the context in which an object, removed from its original context by colonial processes, is displayed and stored carry political implications that are attached to the same colonial process and unequal distributions of power which necessitated/s the theft of that object.

Methodology

Given the aforementioned theoretical perspectives, my project sought to answer the following: How does the language which describes objects procured through France’s colonial past, or the exhibits themselves, reinforce colonial relations of power? How does such language differ when describing “european” objects? What institutional or political barriers prevent repatriation in France’s museums? With particular attention towards language, I conducted critical discourse analysis, a qualitative methodology which holds that the language which describes object, policy, etc. contains political implications and, by proxy, power, which impede or accelerate social change. Furthermore, I conducted a rudimentary visual analysis which sought to discern how the physical space of an exhibit, for example, how it is arranged, encourages a viewer to move through and process and exhibit. I sought to lodge an intentional critique on the logic of the western museum; that it is a universal display of knowledge and culture that is open to all and should be experienced completely detached from violence and history itself. My research contributed to a lineage of scholar/activist labor and intellectual contributions which both acknowledge how France’s museums are shaped by its colonial past/present and apply political, moral, and social pressure upon French class/political/intellectual elite to repatriate stolen objects housed in France’s museums.

Because of the Ritt Kellogg Venture grant, I was privileged to study museums at the site of my class, Toulouse, France, as well as Paris, France. In Paris, my study brought me to Le Musée du Quai Branly, one of Europe’s largest collections of stolen cultural objects from the colonial period, Le Louvre, Le Palais De La Porte Dorée, and Le Centre Pompidou. In Toulouse, I examined exhibits at the Bemberg Fondation, France’s largest private collection of art, Les Abattoirs, and Le Musée des Arts Précieux Paul-Dupuy

Findings and Analysis

My research seeks to critique the museum as a neutral site that functions through a discourse of universalism, that is, the museum is open to the public, in which cultural objects are displayed removed from their original contexts. The Western museum encourages its viewer to consider these objects in an ahistorical, detached manner. My experience of France’s museums reinforce these ideals, and do not provide points of departure for imagining other discursive and aesthetic forms of knowledge/historical display. Perhaps no museum best highlights this experience better than Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly and Le Louvre. Beginning with the former, Le Musée du Quai Branly’s dedication plaque states that the museum exists “pour rendre justice aux arts des peuples d’Afrique, d’Asie, d’Océanie, et des Amériques en reconnaissant leur place essential au sein du patrimoine universel…” To translate, the museum’s purpose is to “do justice” to France’s colonial victims by “recognizing their place within a universal heritage.” Doing justice, for the French museum, therefore, has little to do with repatriation or reparation. Such a motif for “justice” does little to dissect France’s colonial history, the processes in which these objects came to France, or displace France’s status as a global bearer/producer of knowledge due to its colonial past. “Recognizing their place within a universal heritage,” mirrors almost exactly the discourse of universalism I sought to critique in Western museums, and does little to discuss the violence and genocide inherent to the west’s so-called “universal heritage.” Progressing into the museum, I walked up a winding path. On this path, a projected river of cultures, places, and languages swept past me. The jumbling of languages, peoples, and cultures was presented as though all peoples/places exist on a universal/equal plane, the river, and did little to acknowledge the violence inherent to European colonialism, nevermind the sounds of jungles and rainforests which blasted through the entryway, a perverted attempt to equate the wilderness with the victims of colonialism, a centuries old racist/colonial trope. The museum itself presented stolen colonial objects on fairly neutral/ahistorical terms, with the only admission of guilt being that France, along with many other nations, participated in the Transatlantic slave trade. Continuing, Le Louvre provided perhaps the most simplistic evidence of the critique I sought to lodge against western museums. As one of the most popular art museums in the world, I waited in long lines to enter at my selected entry time (a crowd control mechanism), saw magnificent, if not “royal,” European art, and pushed my way through a mob of tourists to see the Mona Lisa. It seemed as though I was bumping elbows with people in every room I went into, until I entered the (single) room dedicated to the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas; sites of France’s colonial past and present. The room itself was difficult to find, almost as if it was sectioned off from the rest of the museum. After a few hours of searching, I arrived to find myself alone, barring the museum security guard. After hours of moving through swarms of tourists and residents alike, it felt strange to be alone in a room which carried such historical weight and significance. My difficulty finding the room, combined with the emptiness of it, made me feel as though I was not supposed to be there. Perhaps France’s colonial guilt manifested itself in Le Louvre; France would rather store its colonial past in a room sectioned off from its “glorious” history. Most of the other museums I explored during my time in Toulouse and Paris were dedicated solely to European art, both historical and contemporary. These museums, like those which attempted to deal with coloniality and pastness, were displayed as universal and neutral, but used France’s rich history of producing art and artists as a means to provide legitimacy to what I might call France’s obsession with itself and its supposed intellectual, cultural, and artistic greatness. Many of the contemporary museums, such as Les Abattoirs in Toulouse sought to disrupt the traditional museum experience by encouraging visitors to interact with, to touch, listen, smell, or taste, the objects/projects contained in the museum. Indeed, allowing the visitor to become an active participant in the display/procurement of “culture” does provide a point of departure from the traditional, colonial museum which participants observe neutrally from a distance, but my research demands that I ask, why is it that participants are only allowed to participate in this disruption in a limited, European, artistic context? In sum, my research sought to ask why it is that France, despite acknowledging the violence of its colonial past with  particular attention to stolen cultural objects, and despite Macron openly calling for the repatriation of stolen colonial objects, has yet to begin the physical processes of reparations and repatriation. My experience of France’s museums allows me to firmly state that, despite acknowledging the aforementioned, France, and perhaps the western museum, is too deeply entrenched in the discourse of an ahistorical and neutral site in which objects are displayed for “all” to experience. It seems, then, that France would rather, or is intentionally, retreat(ing) into such a discursive mode to avoid reckoning with its colonial past, and how such a past shapes its neocolonial present.

Personal Impact and Further Work:

In my time at Colorado College, I have come to deeply appreciate the college’s emphasis on experiential learning. For example, I have been privileged to study geology in the Rocky Mountains and conduct research with community organizations in courses which seek to situate academic research in ethical practice. As a student that is deeply concerned and interested in the use of social and historical theory to understand contemporary realities of inequality in power relations, I am concerned with engaging decolonial theory. Experiential learning, for me, allows one to experience firsthand the phenomena that are read and debated in the classroom, and to allow such experience to guide further intellectual and activist action, praxis. As it pertains to this project, it was deeply moving, yet unsurprising to experience how France’s museums reproduce the colonial logics which the nation, and its museums, seek to distance themselves from. My work reinforced my belief that decolonial practice is not merely a theoretical or philosophical project, but, rather, a physical and material reallocation of knowledge and value and, thus, capital. I am further motivated to organize against neoliberal logics which claim and advertise radical projects (such as antiracism and decoloniality) without the necessary physical/material rearticulations of knowledge, capital, and culture.

Having experienced and understood the western museum’s inability, or unwillingness, to meaningfully reckon with its colonial past, my work allows me to better understand how colonial power is articulated beyond more visible manifestations. As such, I will continue to cast a critical lens towards institutions of knowledge production and preservation. I hope to meaningfully engage with the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, as they too hold stolen and displaced objects from the American conquest of what is now considered the Southwest. It is my hope that my work can allow all who engage with it to better (or differently) consider museums in tandem with colonial histories and to organize for meaningful, tangible rearticulations of power and, by proxy objects and ideas which hold significant economic, social, or cultural capital, through serious engagements with colonial histories.