Abstract
In the halls of ethnographic museums, dust creates layers of memory on the objects that collectors obtained during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in colonial settings. Narratives of the primitive and the exotic other have long been covered by, more or less, critical investigations of the objects’ journeys to the museum and attempts to establish links to contemporary lives and communities. In current exhibitions, an arrangement of voices surrounds the objects orchestrating the scientific descriptions of communities. This discourse does not allow for spaces devoted to silence and mourning, narratives of trauma and dispossession, markers of absence, voids, and abysses.
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Notes
- 1.
As early as 1976, anthropologist Nelson Graburn pioneered with a collection of essays that address the marketing and sale of ethnic art on a global level academically. The phenomenon is, of course, much older and it can be argued that many items that are found in ethnographic collections have already been manufactured for the mass market.
- 2.
See also the essay “Art, Authenticity, and the Baggage of Cultural Encounter” by Ruth Phillips and Christopher Steiner in which they discuss the manufacture of products for the anthropologists and the tricky issue of authenticity (1999, 3).
- 3.
The term Ona was used by the Selk’nam neighbours the Yámana in reference to them. See: Anne Chapman (1982, 155).
- 4.
However, according to missionary and amateur ethnographer Martin Gusinde, Popper was publically accused of the killing at one point and defended himself with a passionate speech in which he portrayed himself as a supporter of the Selk’nam (Gusinde 57).
- 5.
My translation. The original reads: “Ein Pesthauch der Pseudozivilisation zog über das bisher unberührte Land, alles einheimische Leben vergiftend und selbst die leblose Natur besudelnd”.
- 6.
My translation. The original reads: “Schon hatten nämlich die ersten Versuche der Weißen eingesetzt, um die Landstriche der Isla Grande von den Indianern zu säubern”.
- 7.
In his book, Gusinde calls the Hain kloketen (after the term referring to the boys who were to be initiated), a term that many after him used for the ceremony. Anne Chapman, however, clarifies after having talked extensively to those who remained that the ritual was referred to as Hain after the meeting house in which most of it took place (1982, 157).
- 8.
The myth of the Hain ceremony has been told and continues to be told in numerous ways. One example is Los Espiritus Selk’nam. Cuento basado en un mito Selk’nam by Ana Maria Paveu and Constanza Recart with illustrations by Raquel Echenique (editorial amanita, 2009).
- 9.
I have decided against including the images but they can easily be found on the internet.
- 10.
A great collection of texts and documentary to the spectral turn is The Spectralities Reader edited by Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (2013).
- 11.
The description is based on two performances I witnessed in July 2016 in Santiago de Chile. One performance was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation with clear reference to the genocide. However, the possibility of a presentation and conversation is not always given in the context of the group’s performances, particularly when they are taken to the streets as it was the case with the second performance I witnessed.
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Zittlau, A. (2021). Dust on Dust: Performing Selk’nam Visions, Tracing Absent Bodies. In: Otele, O., Gandolfo, L., Galai, Y. (eds) Post-Conflict Memorialization. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_4
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