A Programme of Absolute Disorder

Decolonizing the Museum

Françoise Vergès, Paul Gilroy, Melissa Thackway (Sciences-Po, Paris)

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Hardback

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English

Pluto Press
20 July 2024

Conservation, restoration & care of artworks; Museums & museology; Colonialism & imperialism; Archaeology; Western philosophy: Enlightenment

"The Western museum is a battleground-a terrain of ideological, political and economic contestation. Calls for its decolonisation have washed like great breakers over the institution; almost everyone today wants to ""rethink the museum"". But how many have the audacity to question the very presuppositions of the universal museum itself?

In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Francoise Verges puts the museum in its place. With a specific focus on the history of the Louvre, she centres the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of the Enlightenment and colonialism, of a Europe which presents itself as the guardian of the heritage of all mankind.

Discussing the impasses in the representation of slavery, and examining unsuccessful attempts to subvert the museum institution, Verges outlines a radical horizon: to truly decolonise the museum is to implement a 'programme of absolute disorder', inventing other ways of apprehending the human and non-human world that nourish collective creativity and bring justice and dignity to populations who have been dispossessed of it."

By: Françoise Vergès
Foreword by: Paul Gilroy
Translated by: Melissa Thackway (Sciences-Po Paris)
Imprint: Pluto Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9780745349619
ISBN 10: 0745349617
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 20 July 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Preface Introduction 1. A Programme of Absolute Disorder 2. The Museum: A Battlefield 3. The Louvre, Napoleon, Capture, the Slave 4. Black is the model, white the frame 5. A Museum without Objects Epilogue: Decolonial Tactics Notes

Françoise Vergès is a political scientist, activist, historian, film producer and public educator. She is the author of A Decolonial Feminism, A Feminist History of Violence and the forthcoming A Programme of Absolute Disorder. She is also a senior research fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UCL. Melissa Thackway is an independent researcher and translator. She lectures in African Cinema at Sciences-Po and INALCO in Paris. Her recent translations include A Feminist Theory of Violence by Françoise Vergès, Contemporary African Cinema by Olivier Barlet, Tropical Dream Palaces: Cinema-Going in Colonial West Africa by Odile Goerg and African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction by Daniela Ricci.

Reviews for A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonizing the Museum

'Vergès offers, in the wake of Frantz Fanon, a powerful reflection which goes back through the history of the museum, which has never been a neutral space. Participating in the elaboration of a pseudo-universal, the Western museum is a tool of domination which, henceforth, must be deconstructed in a post-racist and post-capitalist world. Powerful and so relevant' -- Diacritik 'The post-museum era has come. Museums without objects, museums of the present, living museums, museums of oral speech, museums of the great disorders of the world... There is no shortage of ideas for those who still know how to dream' -- Hors-Serie