repatriation Restitution 3 Dec 202019 Jan 2021 Continuing in our three-part series on processes of returning objects and ancestors to their source communities, we turn our attention to “restitution”. Often used (mistakenly!) in place of “repatriation”, whilst…
repatriation Repatriation 26 Nov 202019 Jan 2021 Often misused, repatriation specifically refers to the process by which artefacts/objects are returned to a nation following a formal governmental request. This is often confused with ‘restitution’ and calls for…
Collections (Ancestral) Remains 19 Nov 202019 Jan 2021 Referring to human remains kept in collections, this term restores a sense of familial belonging to collected peoples and re-situates them in relationship to contemporary communities. This is not quite…
Politics and history Reconciliation 11 Nov 202019 Jan 2021 This term is often used in initiatives that aim to restore relations between settlers and Indigneous peoples. For example, South Africa’s ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ was set up to bring…
philosophy Rationality 1 Jan 202019 Jan 2021 On the surface, appeals to rationality are relatively hard to argue with. However, the way in which these are used and what they are contrasted against is important to critically…
critical race theory “Race” 18 Dec 201922 Mar 2020 Notoriously difficult to define, perhaps the best place to start is to state that “race” is a fiction, a constructed set of categories designed to consign and confine peoples into…
philosophy Progress 29 Oct 201919 Jan 2021 The notion of a march towards “progress” is perhaps most worth investigating in scientific narratives. Across the natural, medical, physical and techno-sciences, the message that the human species is inevitably…
Collections Preservation 24 Oct 201919 Jan 2021 Many people understand a museum’s central function to be one of preserving culture for display, study and future access. However, the mission to “preserve” is sometimes at odds with communities…
postcolonial theory (Post)colonial 21 Oct 201921 Oct 2019 The final post in our mini-series on the postcolonial offers a version of the term that attempts to signal to the critical perspectives that have been raised by scholars and…
postcolonial theory Postcolonial 15 Oct 2019 The second variation of “postcolonial” moves us away from the historicised connotations that the hyphen in “post-colonial” denotes. Instead of describing a historical moment following independence from official colonial rule,…
The Decolonial Dictionary 