13650

Decolonizing Heritage: The Reclamation of African Futures

N.N.

Kommentar

The subject of cultural heritage has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Partly this is because African nations are reclaiming the cultural objects that were removed from Africa under conditions of colonial duress. But there is a wider context to this trend. Under colonialism, African cultures were considered inferior to Western colonising nations that ruled over African subjects. The valuation of African art, culture, and architecture is entangled with this colonial project. With the prospect of decolonization in the 1950s, African intellectuals and politicians started to revalue their cultural heritage and reclaim it in the process of independent nation-building. Hence, the processes of colonization, decolonization, heritage-legislation and heritage production are entirely entangled. The study of cultural heritage therefore provides a good lens for studying decolonization. In this lecture series, we will study this historical entanglement in case studies taken from the entire African continent. We will start with the thesis by Senegalese archaeologist Cheikh Anta Diop, rejected by the Sorbonne university, that Ancient Egypt was an African civilisation. Then we move to the first UNESCO International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia in 1960. The focus on the preservation of such monumental heritages shifts when we look at the reclamation of African dance, theatre, and performance in a series of Pan-African festivals, starting with The First World Festival of Negro Art (Dakar, 1966). These vibrant reclamations of African cultural expressions served an important function in the self-assertion of independent nations. We also examine Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), a category invented by UNESCO precisely to accommodate African cultures. Finally, we will look at the processes of reclamation and restitution of African art. Throughout the lecture series, different sites will be studied in relation to the central questions. Schließen

Literaturhinweise

Literature De Jong, Ferdinand. Decolonizing Heritage: Time to repair in Senegal. Cambridge University Press, 2022. Diop, C. A. 1979 [1954]. Nations nègres et culture. Paris and Dakar: Présence Africaine. Fontein, J. 2006. The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: contested landscapes and the power of heritage. Walnut Creek CA: Left Coast Press. Getachew, A. 2019. World-Making After Empire: the rise and fall of self-determination. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Meskell, Lynn. 2018. The Future in Ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murphy, David (ed.). 2016. The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966: contexts and legacies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Peterson, Derek R., Kodzo Gavua, and Ciraj Rassool. The Politics of Heritage in Africa: economies, histories, and infrastructures. London: Cambridge, 2015. Savoy, Bénédicte. Africa’s Struggle for its Art: History of a postcolonial defeat. Princeton University Press, 2022. Schließen