I know we are moving on, but I think it is important to reinforce parts of what we learned about during this week’s theme—postcolonial critiques of GAD. Specifically,
I will focus on postcolonialism’s effort to rewrite and recover history,
recover marginalized and secluded voices, and critique and reject the legacy of
colonialism.
Upon his visit to the Royal
Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, Congolese artist, Aime Mpane, found
statues that depicted Belgian colonialists as heroes for their primitive
Congolese children. Further, Congolese like Mpane were taught that Belgium
brought civilization to their land. Mpane asserts that his people’s history has
been confiscated and ignored. This reality was reinforced The Ohio State
University professor, Sarah Van Beurden, who claimed that when she acquired her
bachelors and masters degree at the University of Leuvnen in Belgium in the
1990s, the university did not provide courses related to the effects of colonialism,
in contrast to its hour-away neighbor, Ghent University. Thus, the dark history
of a nation—slave labor exploitation for wild rubber extraction—was covered up
to hide the military violence at the service of Belgian leader, King Leopold II.
Moreover, research that seeks to rewrite Congolese history
found that King Leopold set up a temporary exhibit on his property to display
Congolese in a village, who were “fed by an organizing committee,” to the
public. Later, a replica of this human zoo was displayed at the 1958 Brussels
world's fair. These activities represented the Congolese as simple artifacts
and ignored their voices and history, which caused Congolese at the fair to
protest.
In an effort to critique and reject the positive legacy of
Belgian colonialism, the Royal Museum of Central Africa experienced reform in
2001, shut down for reconstruction in 2013, and is expected to open at the end
of this year. Now, marginalized and secluded voices and history will be
recovered with an accurate representation of Congolese history at the museum.
The museum attempts to be accurate through the honest dialogue that will be
attached to colonial artifacts and contemporary Congolese art. Please see the
link to the article for further details. I suggest you listen to the six minute
recording if you are tired of reading things.
This social and political article reminded me of two things,
my TV perception of the Global South (i.e. Africa and Latin America) growing up
and my American history courses. First, like the Congolese who read Belgian
history, I feel like I read colonialist or, simply and naively put, white
history. These white men were America’s forefathers who civilized the wild land
with their ideas and technology. However, it completely ignored other voices—Native
American—and in modern times, it ignores our diverse country. How do people
from diverse identities and lands in the world identify with the American forefathers?
Second, during my childhood, I spent hours watching television, and
occasionally I would see commercials that asked Americans to sponsor poor
children in the Global South (GS). This depiction is narrow, problematic, and ignores the complexity of the GS. Fast forward to a social justice retreat in
2016, and I still heard concerns about poor children in the GS. I was
sympathetic to this concern, but also concerned about its persistence. I feel
like I am leaving this discussion closed ended, but do new representations of
the Global South and marginalized voices, whether in educational institutions
or on television, have a responsibility to represent diverse voices and
histories? Definitely, yes, but how do we encourage this? Anyway, I think the
following representation of parts of Kenya makes a good attempt at providing
more accurate and diverse social, political, and economical histories. Anthony
Bourdain demonstrates his humility and intellect at the end when he claims that
this representation of Kenya is mostly through his voice. Positionality in the
house!
I think postcolonial topics begin at 03:40 and end at 18:00 minutes. Between that time, topics range
from the African American's understanding of positionality, colonialism, economic influence of foreign markets, and modern Kenyan
voices. I think I will use parts of the rest of the episode for a future blog.
Thank you for your time.
Hi Ivan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post- I think you raise some really interesting points and it is always important to reflect on topics in GAD especially when moving forward. In last week’s class, we spoke during the end about what we can do or what practice may look like regarding moving forward. I believe something to consider stems from McEwan’s article when she explains how strategies for active feminism will involve linking the information with the symbolic expression behind it, so it can encourage the formation of alliances across differences. I agree with McEwan when she raises points regarding singular imagery/story and I think far too often we let singular images or texts frame our understanding of something. By being an active learner and researcher, we should take it upon ourselves to explore the big picture rather than taking something for face value.
Anthony Bourdain has always done great work in showing positionality and focusing on the story rather than singular images. I think he did exactly what he should do as a journalist and give others a platform to tell their story rather than focusing on his experience alone. Moving forward, I think it is important to reflect on this information as we move beyond theory because this is the beginning of what practice will look like. And practice is what we will be able to take with us as we move to pursue higher education or enter the work force.
This is an interesting discussion of representation, and relevant to the issues we talked about last week as far as narratives in GAD. Museums are something we haven't discussed yet. They promote historical narratives to the public. Reading through the NPR article, the curators discussed the difficulty in representing the Congolese appropriately. I like that the ultimate conclusion was to include them in the making of the museum, as well as those who have come to live in Belgium. Some argued that the museum should be torn down (calling King Leopold a madman), but if the revamped museum does give Congolese people a voice, I think this is an important narrative to share. I was surprised that people in the Congo had been taught that colonialism had been benevolent as late as 1994.
ReplyDeleteThe museum curators are dealing with postcolonial critiques of development. Briggs and Sharp (2004) discuss the need to include other voices in narratives, especially those of indigenous peoples (although now I am appreciating that the term 'indigenous' would do the Congolese no favors. They have to confront the paternal narrative that followers of King Leopold had to civilize and take care of them). An exciting prospect about the museum is that Congolese contributors have the opportunity to reach a wide audience and help direct the narrative from here on out as they live in both the Congo and Belgium.