Andrea Roca | Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) (original) (raw)
Papers by Andrea Roca
Roots & Routes. Research on Visual Cultures. Year XIII, n°41, January-April 2023, 'Americas. Re-emergence, pluriversity and resistance', 2023
In 2014, the interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman started to conceive and organize t... more In 2014, the interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman started to conceive and organize the exhibition Shame and Prejudice. A Story of Resilience as part of the "celebrations" of 150 years of Canadian independence. According to the artist, that century and a half coincided with the worst period of Indigenous history and he decided, through Shame and Prejudice, to point out the political urgency of rewriting Canadian history.
In this article I present and analyze two of Monkman's paintings from that exhibition, The Daddies (2016) and The Scream (2017). After presenting the broader context of the continuity of the colonial process in Canada, through the examination of the temporalities inscribed in Monkman's paintings I analyze his works as agents of decolonization and indigenization of history, history painting and museums.
Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, vol. 56, p. 1-26, 2022
In this article I present and analyze two paintings by interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent ... more In this article I present and analyze two paintings by interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman, classified by him as history painting. Both works - "The Daddies" (2016) and "The Scream" (2017) - were part of the exhibition "Shame and Prejudice. A Story of Resilience". This was conceived and organized by Monkman himself as part of the 'celebrations' of 150 years of Canadian independence, and pointed at the political urgency of rewriting history. After presenting the broader context of the continuity of the colonial process in Canada, through the examination of the temporalities inscribed in Monkman's paintings I analyze his works as agents of decolonization and indigenization of history, history paintings, and museums.
Keywords: Kent Monkman – Canadian history – history painting – decolonization and indigenization – museums
This paper is an analysis of the content, and of the patrimonial and political dimensions of the ... more This paper is an analysis of the content, and of the patrimonial and political dimensions of the exhibit Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices of Saint Michael’s Residential School, on display in 2013/2014 at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver, Canada). The first part of the text is a brief history of Residential Schools in Canada. In the second part I follow the trajectories of the last three decades of indigenous contest and opposition to the Canadian government, and the diverse types of demands for reparation for the suffering caused by those institutions. In the third part of the paper I describe how this exhibition came to be, its contents and its organization. Finally, I analyze the materiality of the photographs that structure this show, classifying these images as “objects in becoming” that, by means of the visitor’s interaction, bring new dimensions to the museum as a social, cultural and political agent.
KEYWORDS: Indigenous Residential Schools, Canada, University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, photography, materiality, museum practices.
This text identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations from contempora... more This text identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations from contemporary Brazilian and Argentinean territories. The analysis is centered on two iconographic sets authored by the German artist traveller Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858): the 16 lithographs gathered in his album Picturesque Travel through Brazil and the 25 drawings illustrating the poem The Captive, written by the Argentinean romantic writer Esteban Echeverría. Comparing both sets of images, I argue that the artist’s contexts and social relationships, framed what there was ‘to see’ and what could be ‘painted’. This analysis offers central resources to understand visual policies involved in the processes of construction and dissemination of images of indigenous peoples in Brazil and Argentina during the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st century, demonstrating the social work of these images and its resilient political consequences until the present.
Revista de Antropologia, 2015
The revision of historical relationships of domination in ethnographic museums and the emergence ... more The revision of historical relationships of domination in ethnographic museums and the emergence and proliferation of indigenous museums are both part of the post-colonial turn of recent decades. While ethnographic museums have acknowledged their role as instruments of colonial expansion and started to consider the presence of the producers of the objects on display, indigenous museums initiated on-going claims of indigenous sovereignty over the definition and interpretation of their own histories. In this process of museological decolonization one of the crucial practices is the so called collaborative work between professionals that work in museums and indigenous populations. Departing from a series of cases from Canada and the United States that have collaboration as its corner-stones, this text intends to evaluate the scope, limits and contact points between collaborative work and indigenous self-representation, providing an analytic structure that goes beyond the borders of these two countries.
Departing from a comparison between the indigenous agency at the Magüta Museum (the first indigen... more Departing from a comparison between the indigenous agency at the Magüta Museum (the first indigenous museum in Brazil, belongs to the Ticuna people, located in Benjamin Constant, Amazonas) and the exhibitions about Musqueam Nation at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (that has pioneered collaboration in museum work with indigenous peoples, located in Vancouver, Canada), this work analyses coexistent modalities of the so-called indigenization of museums. We are interested in distinguishing the epistemologies and politics involved in the construction of the indigenous contents of these spaces and their self-representation, problematizing the expression "indigenization of museums" and reflecting, at the same time, about what is reconstructed after the colonial situations in terms of museum scenarios.
This paper describes the process of translating José Sergio Leite Lopes’ 1976 book El Vapor del D... more This paper describes the process of translating José Sergio Leite Lopes’ 1976 book El Vapor del Diablo: el trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. First I introduce the reader to the context of emergence of this book and to an outline of its contents; I then develop the different research instances implied in this translation process. Distancing from technical dimensions of literary translations, I identify four specific conditions for the translation of El Vapor: the role of the author in the process, former contexts, the risks of alleged ‘equivalences’ and the influence of the trajectory of El Vapor as a book. By analyzing the decisions, interventions and procedures adopted, this text intends to generate new agendas for the translation of ethnographies arguing, namely, that anthropologists should be in charge of these.
The sabre of General San Martin is considered by Argentineans an historical object and an icon of... more The sabre of General San Martin is considered by Argentineans an historical object and an icon of the nation. By analysing a complex web of interdependencies, reciprocities and interchanges disclosed by this object, this article explores the social production of meaning, value and sense disclosed by objects that constitute, so called, 'national historical heritage'. By identifying the immaterial dimensions, that seem to apply to these objects, the role of anthropological inquiry is explored.
Revista Interseções, Rio de Janeiro: UERJ, v. 10, pp. 239-254.
Through an analysis of the systems of classification of the objects belonging to the Museo Histór... more Through an analysis of the systems of classification of the objects belonging to the Museo Histórico Nacional of Argentina, this articles purports to reflect on the posssibilities of deconstruction and (re)invention of national histories by examining the very objects that helped to construct them.
Revista Arqueología Suramericana, Cauca: Universidad del Cauca, v. 4, pp. 191-214.
Debido a sus condiciones de aparición y desarrollo, la historia ha sido comprendida como una cien... more Debido a sus condiciones de aparición y desarrollo, la historia ha sido comprendida como una ciencia propia de la civilización, identificándose con ella; mientras tanto, fueron dirigidos hacia el dominio de la antropología todos aquellos pueblos que no entraban en sus organizadas secuencias. Esta discontinuidad colonial permitió que se destinara a las sociedades indígenas hacia museos de antropología y arqueología, reservando para la civilización occidental los museos de historia; en los primeros, la exhibición de una obligatoria alteridad resultó reforzada por medio de estructuras temporales que permitían incorporar a aquellas sociedades observadas en términos de pasado=distancia respecto al presente civilizado del observador occidental. Considerándose tales orígenes, el presente artículo propone una reflexión sobre los actuales usos del tiempo en el Museo Etnográfico “Juan Bautista Ambrosetti”. En primer lugar, se señalan brevemente las características ‘heredadas’ de los museos etnográficos en general, y las formas que adquirieron los usos del pasado dentro del siglo de vida de esta institución en particular. Posteriormente (y privilegiándose al público escolar) se exponen las dinámicas de intercambio que tienen lugar durante las actuales visitas guiadas de este museo, argumentándose que a través de diferentes articulaciones temporales - no incluidas en las muestras - resultan posibles otras transmisiones de conocimiento que exceden las informaciones organizadas por sus objetos y narrativas. Por último, se propone a las visitas guiadas como un momento en el cual particulares reformulaciones del pasado modifican e interpelan el presente del visitante.
Books by Andrea Roca
This book identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations of contemporary... more This book identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations of contemporary Brazilian and Argentinean territories, departing from two iconographic sets authored by the German artist traveller Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Proposing a comparative reading of these sets, the text establishes their conditions of emergence and achievement in the first half of the 19th century, and their subsequent paths and social definitions until the present. These images, it is argued, are less relevant as bearers of empirical data, than as bearers of social relations. Conceptualized as artefacts and research mediators, they allow for disclosing contexts shared by social actors, ideological schemes, and specific political projects, demonstrating the conditions that made possible to visualize the production of ‘Indigenous peoples of the Brazilian hinterlands’ and of ‘Indigenous peoples of the Argentinean desert’. These images encapsulate and reproduce part of the socio-political dynamics engaged in the production of a specific Indigenous identity, and the concomitant place assigned to Indigenous peoples in the nation building projects of these countries. Inasmuch as they naturalize conceptions of social differentiation, their documentary value – it is argued – rests on their potential to unveil the socio-political dynamics of their inception. Departing from the aesthetical and documental (scientific or historical) readings these images have been subjected to, it is argued they must be seen as colonial products. As such, they document different orders of cultural domination, which have interpreted Indigenous populations as objects of thought and political intervention.
This work identifies and analyzes the uses of time in the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires Cit... more This work identifies and analyzes the uses of time in the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires City. Its chapters are organized with the aim of outlying an analytic pathway that help us articulate our reading of the uses of the past and the present of that university ethnographic museum. In the light of previous temporal constructions, we analyze the constructions that are articulated during the guided visits: their scope and comprehension, the kind of knowledge that it is transmitted and the appropriations and identifications that they encourage. Since these constructions allow certain historical and social visibilities, we point out the political capacities of its uses. Through their possibilities we identify the organization of narratives that, transcending the indigenous societies, use the colonial collections which are re-signified in terms of present social problems, allowing to set up a contemporary proximity by redrawing previous distances between ‘us’ and ‘them’. We also highlight the museologic application of these temporal strategies inside the university framework the museum belongs to; framework that consolidate its position as a producer of scientific knowledge that should be transmitted in a divulgation language. Developing informative, pedagogic as well as political functions, we defined the Ethnographic Museum as a “place of memory creation”, not only for the place that it gives to History for any contemporary social explanation but also for opening up new historical spaces where it is possible to habilitate a memory previously inexistent.
Book Chapters by Andrea Roca
In: Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional. Vol. 51, "História, Museologia e Patrimônio". Rio de Janeiro: MHN, pp. 79-95, 2019
The purpose of this text is to demonstrate how museums, through political uses of their heritage,... more The purpose of this text is to demonstrate how museums, through political uses of their heritage, are privileged spaces for questioning and dismantling official histories. In the first part I will present a brief historical context about the white and the indigenous worlds in current Argentina. In the second part, I will analyze the museological strategies of an exhibition held at the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires between 2000 and 2010, that questioned and challenged the official history. I will then present three contemporary facts about the current and repeated criminalization of the Mapuche indigenous people by the Argentinean government. In the fourth and last part, I will reflect on the centrality of the educational and political action of museums in the critical teaching of history.
Key-words: heritage – museums - history - indigenous peoples - Argentinean state
In: O futuro dos museus e os museus do futuro. Anais do III Simpósio Internacional de Pesquisa em Museologia. Ana Gonçalves Magalhães (org.). São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP, pp. 118-136, 2019
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the social role of ethnographic museums has been qu... more In the last decades of the twentieth century, the social role of ethnographic museums has been questioned by the so-called "anthropology of colonialism" and postmodern critique. Schematically speaking, the classificatory organization of museums was framed under relations of exclusion and inclusion, making clear their political dimension. The discussion of the epistemological, moral, and political implications of glass boxes that "represented" absent people has allowed for the creation of a new museology, which opened space for indigenous agency and self-representation. This "return of the protagonists" gave voice to the users, owners and producers of the objects exhibited, favouring the formation of indigenous museums as holders of rights and political strategies, which are of fundamental importance in the processes of updating indigenous peoples’ identities, and in the reinvention of their performances, images, narratives, memories, and projects for the future. Based on an ethnographic and historical analysis of two museum cases (an exhibition on indigenous people hosted in one of Canada's most important museums, and an itinerant indigenous exhibition, showed in more than forty locations in Canada and the United States), this communication proposes to reflect on the coexisting modalities of the so-called indigenization of museums. I will argue that, in the hands of indigenous subjects, the collections bring into play their critical potential, contesting colonial histories and historiographies, indigenizing knowledge, and making demarcations of a political nature. I am also interested in analyzing the differences between decolonization and indigenization, with their respective scope and political applications.
Keywords: Museums; Indigenization; Decolonization
In: De acervos coloniais aos museus indígenas: formas de protagonismo e de construção da ilusão m... more In: De acervos coloniais aos museus indígenas: formas de protagonismo e de construção da ilusão museal. João Pacheco de Oliveira e Rita de Cássia Mello Santos (eds.). Paraíba: UFPB-Editora Universitária da Universidade Federal da Paraíba, pp. 103-126.
In: Reinheimer, Patricia; Araújo, Nathanael; Santos, Miriam (orgs.) Imigração e cultura material.... more In: Reinheimer, Patricia; Araújo, Nathanael; Santos, Miriam (orgs.) Imigração e cultura material. Coisas e pessoas em movimento. Rio de Janeiro: Oikos, pp. 123-158, 2019 (E-book)
In: José Sergio Leite Lopes. El Vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. Buenos Ai... more In: José Sergio Leite Lopes. El Vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. Buenos Aires: Editorial Antropofagia, pp. 21-25.
Roots & Routes. Research on Visual Cultures. Year XIII, n°41, January-April 2023, 'Americas. Re-emergence, pluriversity and resistance', 2023
In 2014, the interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman started to conceive and organize t... more In 2014, the interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman started to conceive and organize the exhibition Shame and Prejudice. A Story of Resilience as part of the "celebrations" of 150 years of Canadian independence. According to the artist, that century and a half coincided with the worst period of Indigenous history and he decided, through Shame and Prejudice, to point out the political urgency of rewriting Canadian history.
In this article I present and analyze two of Monkman's paintings from that exhibition, The Daddies (2016) and The Scream (2017). After presenting the broader context of the continuity of the colonial process in Canada, through the examination of the temporalities inscribed in Monkman's paintings I analyze his works as agents of decolonization and indigenization of history, history painting and museums.
Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, vol. 56, p. 1-26, 2022
In this article I present and analyze two paintings by interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent ... more In this article I present and analyze two paintings by interdisciplinary Cree visual artist Kent Monkman, classified by him as history painting. Both works - "The Daddies" (2016) and "The Scream" (2017) - were part of the exhibition "Shame and Prejudice. A Story of Resilience". This was conceived and organized by Monkman himself as part of the 'celebrations' of 150 years of Canadian independence, and pointed at the political urgency of rewriting history. After presenting the broader context of the continuity of the colonial process in Canada, through the examination of the temporalities inscribed in Monkman's paintings I analyze his works as agents of decolonization and indigenization of history, history paintings, and museums.
Keywords: Kent Monkman – Canadian history – history painting – decolonization and indigenization – museums
This paper is an analysis of the content, and of the patrimonial and political dimensions of the ... more This paper is an analysis of the content, and of the patrimonial and political dimensions of the exhibit Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices of Saint Michael’s Residential School, on display in 2013/2014 at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology (Vancouver, Canada). The first part of the text is a brief history of Residential Schools in Canada. In the second part I follow the trajectories of the last three decades of indigenous contest and opposition to the Canadian government, and the diverse types of demands for reparation for the suffering caused by those institutions. In the third part of the paper I describe how this exhibition came to be, its contents and its organization. Finally, I analyze the materiality of the photographs that structure this show, classifying these images as “objects in becoming” that, by means of the visitor’s interaction, bring new dimensions to the museum as a social, cultural and political agent.
KEYWORDS: Indigenous Residential Schools, Canada, University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, photography, materiality, museum practices.
This text identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations from contempora... more This text identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations from contemporary Brazilian and Argentinean territories. The analysis is centered on two iconographic sets authored by the German artist traveller Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858): the 16 lithographs gathered in his album Picturesque Travel through Brazil and the 25 drawings illustrating the poem The Captive, written by the Argentinean romantic writer Esteban Echeverría. Comparing both sets of images, I argue that the artist’s contexts and social relationships, framed what there was ‘to see’ and what could be ‘painted’. This analysis offers central resources to understand visual policies involved in the processes of construction and dissemination of images of indigenous peoples in Brazil and Argentina during the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st century, demonstrating the social work of these images and its resilient political consequences until the present.
Revista de Antropologia, 2015
The revision of historical relationships of domination in ethnographic museums and the emergence ... more The revision of historical relationships of domination in ethnographic museums and the emergence and proliferation of indigenous museums are both part of the post-colonial turn of recent decades. While ethnographic museums have acknowledged their role as instruments of colonial expansion and started to consider the presence of the producers of the objects on display, indigenous museums initiated on-going claims of indigenous sovereignty over the definition and interpretation of their own histories. In this process of museological decolonization one of the crucial practices is the so called collaborative work between professionals that work in museums and indigenous populations. Departing from a series of cases from Canada and the United States that have collaboration as its corner-stones, this text intends to evaluate the scope, limits and contact points between collaborative work and indigenous self-representation, providing an analytic structure that goes beyond the borders of these two countries.
Departing from a comparison between the indigenous agency at the Magüta Museum (the first indigen... more Departing from a comparison between the indigenous agency at the Magüta Museum (the first indigenous museum in Brazil, belongs to the Ticuna people, located in Benjamin Constant, Amazonas) and the exhibitions about Musqueam Nation at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (that has pioneered collaboration in museum work with indigenous peoples, located in Vancouver, Canada), this work analyses coexistent modalities of the so-called indigenization of museums. We are interested in distinguishing the epistemologies and politics involved in the construction of the indigenous contents of these spaces and their self-representation, problematizing the expression "indigenization of museums" and reflecting, at the same time, about what is reconstructed after the colonial situations in terms of museum scenarios.
This paper describes the process of translating José Sergio Leite Lopes’ 1976 book El Vapor del D... more This paper describes the process of translating José Sergio Leite Lopes’ 1976 book El Vapor del Diablo: el trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. First I introduce the reader to the context of emergence of this book and to an outline of its contents; I then develop the different research instances implied in this translation process. Distancing from technical dimensions of literary translations, I identify four specific conditions for the translation of El Vapor: the role of the author in the process, former contexts, the risks of alleged ‘equivalences’ and the influence of the trajectory of El Vapor as a book. By analyzing the decisions, interventions and procedures adopted, this text intends to generate new agendas for the translation of ethnographies arguing, namely, that anthropologists should be in charge of these.
The sabre of General San Martin is considered by Argentineans an historical object and an icon of... more The sabre of General San Martin is considered by Argentineans an historical object and an icon of the nation. By analysing a complex web of interdependencies, reciprocities and interchanges disclosed by this object, this article explores the social production of meaning, value and sense disclosed by objects that constitute, so called, 'national historical heritage'. By identifying the immaterial dimensions, that seem to apply to these objects, the role of anthropological inquiry is explored.
Revista Interseções, Rio de Janeiro: UERJ, v. 10, pp. 239-254.
Through an analysis of the systems of classification of the objects belonging to the Museo Histór... more Through an analysis of the systems of classification of the objects belonging to the Museo Histórico Nacional of Argentina, this articles purports to reflect on the posssibilities of deconstruction and (re)invention of national histories by examining the very objects that helped to construct them.
Revista Arqueología Suramericana, Cauca: Universidad del Cauca, v. 4, pp. 191-214.
Debido a sus condiciones de aparición y desarrollo, la historia ha sido comprendida como una cien... more Debido a sus condiciones de aparición y desarrollo, la historia ha sido comprendida como una ciencia propia de la civilización, identificándose con ella; mientras tanto, fueron dirigidos hacia el dominio de la antropología todos aquellos pueblos que no entraban en sus organizadas secuencias. Esta discontinuidad colonial permitió que se destinara a las sociedades indígenas hacia museos de antropología y arqueología, reservando para la civilización occidental los museos de historia; en los primeros, la exhibición de una obligatoria alteridad resultó reforzada por medio de estructuras temporales que permitían incorporar a aquellas sociedades observadas en términos de pasado=distancia respecto al presente civilizado del observador occidental. Considerándose tales orígenes, el presente artículo propone una reflexión sobre los actuales usos del tiempo en el Museo Etnográfico “Juan Bautista Ambrosetti”. En primer lugar, se señalan brevemente las características ‘heredadas’ de los museos etnográficos en general, y las formas que adquirieron los usos del pasado dentro del siglo de vida de esta institución en particular. Posteriormente (y privilegiándose al público escolar) se exponen las dinámicas de intercambio que tienen lugar durante las actuales visitas guiadas de este museo, argumentándose que a través de diferentes articulaciones temporales - no incluidas en las muestras - resultan posibles otras transmisiones de conocimiento que exceden las informaciones organizadas por sus objetos y narrativas. Por último, se propone a las visitas guiadas como un momento en el cual particulares reformulaciones del pasado modifican e interpelan el presente del visitante.
This book identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations of contemporary... more This book identifies and analyses ‘nationalized’ images of Indigenous populations of contemporary Brazilian and Argentinean territories, departing from two iconographic sets authored by the German artist traveller Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Proposing a comparative reading of these sets, the text establishes their conditions of emergence and achievement in the first half of the 19th century, and their subsequent paths and social definitions until the present. These images, it is argued, are less relevant as bearers of empirical data, than as bearers of social relations. Conceptualized as artefacts and research mediators, they allow for disclosing contexts shared by social actors, ideological schemes, and specific political projects, demonstrating the conditions that made possible to visualize the production of ‘Indigenous peoples of the Brazilian hinterlands’ and of ‘Indigenous peoples of the Argentinean desert’. These images encapsulate and reproduce part of the socio-political dynamics engaged in the production of a specific Indigenous identity, and the concomitant place assigned to Indigenous peoples in the nation building projects of these countries. Inasmuch as they naturalize conceptions of social differentiation, their documentary value – it is argued – rests on their potential to unveil the socio-political dynamics of their inception. Departing from the aesthetical and documental (scientific or historical) readings these images have been subjected to, it is argued they must be seen as colonial products. As such, they document different orders of cultural domination, which have interpreted Indigenous populations as objects of thought and political intervention.
This work identifies and analyzes the uses of time in the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires Cit... more This work identifies and analyzes the uses of time in the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires City. Its chapters are organized with the aim of outlying an analytic pathway that help us articulate our reading of the uses of the past and the present of that university ethnographic museum. In the light of previous temporal constructions, we analyze the constructions that are articulated during the guided visits: their scope and comprehension, the kind of knowledge that it is transmitted and the appropriations and identifications that they encourage. Since these constructions allow certain historical and social visibilities, we point out the political capacities of its uses. Through their possibilities we identify the organization of narratives that, transcending the indigenous societies, use the colonial collections which are re-signified in terms of present social problems, allowing to set up a contemporary proximity by redrawing previous distances between ‘us’ and ‘them’. We also highlight the museologic application of these temporal strategies inside the university framework the museum belongs to; framework that consolidate its position as a producer of scientific knowledge that should be transmitted in a divulgation language. Developing informative, pedagogic as well as political functions, we defined the Ethnographic Museum as a “place of memory creation”, not only for the place that it gives to History for any contemporary social explanation but also for opening up new historical spaces where it is possible to habilitate a memory previously inexistent.
In: Anais do Museu Histórico Nacional. Vol. 51, "História, Museologia e Patrimônio". Rio de Janeiro: MHN, pp. 79-95, 2019
The purpose of this text is to demonstrate how museums, through political uses of their heritage,... more The purpose of this text is to demonstrate how museums, through political uses of their heritage, are privileged spaces for questioning and dismantling official histories. In the first part I will present a brief historical context about the white and the indigenous worlds in current Argentina. In the second part, I will analyze the museological strategies of an exhibition held at the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires between 2000 and 2010, that questioned and challenged the official history. I will then present three contemporary facts about the current and repeated criminalization of the Mapuche indigenous people by the Argentinean government. In the fourth and last part, I will reflect on the centrality of the educational and political action of museums in the critical teaching of history.
Key-words: heritage – museums - history - indigenous peoples - Argentinean state
In: O futuro dos museus e os museus do futuro. Anais do III Simpósio Internacional de Pesquisa em Museologia. Ana Gonçalves Magalhães (org.). São Paulo: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP, pp. 118-136, 2019
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the social role of ethnographic museums has been qu... more In the last decades of the twentieth century, the social role of ethnographic museums has been questioned by the so-called "anthropology of colonialism" and postmodern critique. Schematically speaking, the classificatory organization of museums was framed under relations of exclusion and inclusion, making clear their political dimension. The discussion of the epistemological, moral, and political implications of glass boxes that "represented" absent people has allowed for the creation of a new museology, which opened space for indigenous agency and self-representation. This "return of the protagonists" gave voice to the users, owners and producers of the objects exhibited, favouring the formation of indigenous museums as holders of rights and political strategies, which are of fundamental importance in the processes of updating indigenous peoples’ identities, and in the reinvention of their performances, images, narratives, memories, and projects for the future. Based on an ethnographic and historical analysis of two museum cases (an exhibition on indigenous people hosted in one of Canada's most important museums, and an itinerant indigenous exhibition, showed in more than forty locations in Canada and the United States), this communication proposes to reflect on the coexisting modalities of the so-called indigenization of museums. I will argue that, in the hands of indigenous subjects, the collections bring into play their critical potential, contesting colonial histories and historiographies, indigenizing knowledge, and making demarcations of a political nature. I am also interested in analyzing the differences between decolonization and indigenization, with their respective scope and political applications.
Keywords: Museums; Indigenization; Decolonization
In: De acervos coloniais aos museus indígenas: formas de protagonismo e de construção da ilusão m... more In: De acervos coloniais aos museus indígenas: formas de protagonismo e de construção da ilusão museal. João Pacheco de Oliveira e Rita de Cássia Mello Santos (eds.). Paraíba: UFPB-Editora Universitária da Universidade Federal da Paraíba, pp. 103-126.
In: Reinheimer, Patricia; Araújo, Nathanael; Santos, Miriam (orgs.) Imigração e cultura material.... more In: Reinheimer, Patricia; Araújo, Nathanael; Santos, Miriam (orgs.) Imigração e cultura material. Coisas e pessoas em movimento. Rio de Janeiro: Oikos, pp. 123-158, 2019 (E-book)
In: José Sergio Leite Lopes. El Vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. Buenos Ai... more In: José Sergio Leite Lopes. El Vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar. Buenos Aires: Editorial Antropofagia, pp. 21-25.
In: Souza Chagas, Mário; Zamorano Bezerra, Rafael; Fassa Benchetrit, Sarah. (Org.). A Democratiza... more In: Souza Chagas, Mário; Zamorano Bezerra, Rafael; Fassa Benchetrit, Sarah. (Org.). A Democratização da Memória: a Função Social dos Museus Ibero-Americanos. Rio de Janeiro: Museu Histórico Nacional, pp. 105-124.
In: Roigé, Xavier; Fernández, Esther; Arrieta, Iñaki (Org.). El futuro de los museos etnológicos.... more In: Roigé, Xavier; Fernández, Esther; Arrieta, Iñaki (Org.). El futuro de los museos etnológicos. Consideraciones introductorias para un debate. Donostia - San Sebastián: ANKULEGI antropologia elkartea, pp. 231-246
João Pacheco de Oliveira. "Exterminio y tutela: procesos de formación de alteridades en el Brasil... more João Pacheco de Oliveira. "Exterminio y tutela: procesos de formación de alteridades en el Brasil" (1st ed.) Buenos Aires: UNSAM Edita, 2019, 404 p.
José Sergio Leite Lopes. "El vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar" (1st ed.) Bu... more José Sergio Leite Lopes. "El vapor del Diablo. El trabajo de los obreros del azúcar" (1st ed.) Buenos Aires: Editorial Antropofagia, 2011, 320 p.
This work focuses on the classificatory systems of objects in two museums in Argentina, the Histo... more This work focuses on the classificatory systems of objects in two museums in Argentina, the Historical National Museum and the Ethnographic Museum. Departing from a comparative perspective, the argument explores how those systems are constitutive of different narratives about “us” (the national society) and about “them” (the indigenous peoples of Argentina as the internal otherness).
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires (FFyL-UBA) - December 2003, 162 p.
http://repositorio.filo.uba.ar/handle/filodigital/954