Concurrent Session 4-D

Location

Bryant Hall, Room 209

Start Date

15-3-2025 3:00 PM

End Date

15-3-2025 4:15 PM

Description

  • Decolonizing the Museum: The Case of the Royal Treasures of Benin
    Anne Quinney, Professor of French, University of Mississippi
    In 2017, French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced the restitution of African artefacts taken by French ethnographers at the request of the French state at end of the 19th century. With Macron’s historic announcement came the commissioning of a report that assessed the history and present state of publicly-owned collections of African artworks acquired illicitly during the period of colonization. Macron asked for advice to begin the restitution process with international cooperation, to provide a legal framework for de-accessioning works of art, and to recommend ways to display them in African museums in the future. The question of whether to de-accession cultural heritage of former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa has since triggered a wider public debate in Africa, Europe and the United States. Other former colonizing nations are compelled now to assess their collections of seized art and to address the question of rightful restitution. First published online in November 2018, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics” has become a blueprint, if not a manifesto, that argues, first and foremost, for the recognition of the forceful appropriation of cultural objects as a crime against the communities of origin. Secondly, the report lays bare the purpose of the act of collecting, studying and exhibiting African heritage (first as curios and later as ethnological objects), by European museums and scientists, as yet another tool of domination in the long history of violence perpetrated by colonizers against the victims of colonization. Moreover, discussions about rebalancing global cultural heritage between the northern and the southern hemispheres or “the return of an irreplaceable cultural heritage to those who created it"" (Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, Director of UNESCO, 1978) has been ongoing since the end of colonization. My paper will discuss the debate around cultural restitution in the postcolonial era and the ways in which memorializing colonial exploits has filtered into our museum culture, has been legimitated over time, and must be reevaluated today.
  • Whose Memory: Cherokee and Lost Cause Narratives of the Civil War
    Kris Plunkett, PhD candidate, Department of History, Tulane University
    The United Daughters of the Confederacy memorialization of Stand Watie exemplifies how historical memory is a political tool as much as it is an organic part of community identity. Studies of Civil War memorialization usually focus on the South’s rewritten narrative that frames the Confederacy as an honorable “Lost Cause” and how whites attempted to erase slavery as the reason for secession. The UDC was one of the most prolific authors of the Lost Cause. In Western states, especially Oklahoma, the UDC hoped to further rewrite America’s memory of the war by playing up the fact that more native peoples sided with the South than with the North. Many native nations fought for the South for a complex web of reasons, including the hope of preserving slavery. The UDC erected monuments to Stand Watie, a Cherokee politician and the last Confederate general to surrender, not to honor the Cherokee Confederates, but to show Northern and Western whites that the Confederacy was righteous. Parsing out the differences between how the UDC and Cherokee remembered the war uses traditional history methods with the goal of helping Americans understand the differences between memory and history, which is necessary for better policy decisions. The ethics of who decides a nation’s memory is an ongoing debate, and one that demands deeper analysis of how the Lost Cause operated in the early 20th century. Cherokee memorialization of the war did not follow the Lost Cause, because it was a white-supremacist memory of the war. Despite attempts to assimilate enough to be allowed to maintain their identity, the white South never treated the Cherokee as political or social equals. By evoking the mythic noble savage, ignoring the fact that many Cherokee veterans yet lived, the Western UDC used Stand Watie to further whitewash the war.
  • Chair: William Jade Langley, MA Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi

Relational Format

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Mar 15th, 3:00 PM Mar 15th, 4:15 PM

Concurrent Session 4-D

Bryant Hall, Room 209

  • Decolonizing the Museum: The Case of the Royal Treasures of Benin
    Anne Quinney, Professor of French, University of Mississippi
    In 2017, French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced the restitution of African artefacts taken by French ethnographers at the request of the French state at end of the 19th century. With Macron’s historic announcement came the commissioning of a report that assessed the history and present state of publicly-owned collections of African artworks acquired illicitly during the period of colonization. Macron asked for advice to begin the restitution process with international cooperation, to provide a legal framework for de-accessioning works of art, and to recommend ways to display them in African museums in the future. The question of whether to de-accession cultural heritage of former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa has since triggered a wider public debate in Africa, Europe and the United States. Other former colonizing nations are compelled now to assess their collections of seized art and to address the question of rightful restitution. First published online in November 2018, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics” has become a blueprint, if not a manifesto, that argues, first and foremost, for the recognition of the forceful appropriation of cultural objects as a crime against the communities of origin. Secondly, the report lays bare the purpose of the act of collecting, studying and exhibiting African heritage (first as curios and later as ethnological objects), by European museums and scientists, as yet another tool of domination in the long history of violence perpetrated by colonizers against the victims of colonization. Moreover, discussions about rebalancing global cultural heritage between the northern and the southern hemispheres or “the return of an irreplaceable cultural heritage to those who created it"" (Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, Director of UNESCO, 1978) has been ongoing since the end of colonization. My paper will discuss the debate around cultural restitution in the postcolonial era and the ways in which memorializing colonial exploits has filtered into our museum culture, has been legimitated over time, and must be reevaluated today.
  • Whose Memory: Cherokee and Lost Cause Narratives of the Civil War
    Kris Plunkett, PhD candidate, Department of History, Tulane University
    The United Daughters of the Confederacy memorialization of Stand Watie exemplifies how historical memory is a political tool as much as it is an organic part of community identity. Studies of Civil War memorialization usually focus on the South’s rewritten narrative that frames the Confederacy as an honorable “Lost Cause” and how whites attempted to erase slavery as the reason for secession. The UDC was one of the most prolific authors of the Lost Cause. In Western states, especially Oklahoma, the UDC hoped to further rewrite America’s memory of the war by playing up the fact that more native peoples sided with the South than with the North. Many native nations fought for the South for a complex web of reasons, including the hope of preserving slavery. The UDC erected monuments to Stand Watie, a Cherokee politician and the last Confederate general to surrender, not to honor the Cherokee Confederates, but to show Northern and Western whites that the Confederacy was righteous. Parsing out the differences between how the UDC and Cherokee remembered the war uses traditional history methods with the goal of helping Americans understand the differences between memory and history, which is necessary for better policy decisions. The ethics of who decides a nation’s memory is an ongoing debate, and one that demands deeper analysis of how the Lost Cause operated in the early 20th century. Cherokee memorialization of the war did not follow the Lost Cause, because it was a white-supremacist memory of the war. Despite attempts to assimilate enough to be allowed to maintain their identity, the white South never treated the Cherokee as political or social equals. By evoking the mythic noble savage, ignoring the fact that many Cherokee veterans yet lived, the Western UDC used Stand Watie to further whitewash the war.
  • Chair: William Jade Langley, MA Candidate, Philosophy, University of Mississippi