Reflections, feeling and the power of crafting a narrative
by Yasmin Heyworth
What was exceedingly prevalent to me, was as the group began to handle, investigate and manage these objects, as part of the anthropological teaching collection, was the unknown and embedded stories yet to be told. In and of themselves as pieces of autonomy, value and authenticity as well as historically prevalent pieces of ethnographic work.
Beginning to fathom the life course of inanimate objects is a perplexing one, as even from an anthropological perspective absolute truths regarding certain unknown objects and artefacts cannot be made. Only educated guesses and intellectual narratives can be proposed.
In reflecting on the discipline of anthropology and the effects of colonialism it’s fundamental to question these stories we tell, to not further perpetuate notion of imperial governing. Ethnographic materials are key but often lie in colonial legacies, regarding the ethics of collection and possession. What was evident was a mixture of unease associated with the possession and opportunity to have authority over these pieces of material, but also the privilege in bringing these to light. As proposed eloquently by Hodge (2018), but not proposing the viewer as central to ethnographic material but that the objects contain autonomy in themselves in a step forward as to not extent this imperial gaze.
Material culture can often tell stories words cannot. Through a process of ‘listening for the unsaid’ (Hartman, 2008: 2-3) and thus letting these objects speak to us in a sense. But we first must acknowledge that these narratives are politically constituted in guiding areas of speculation in terms of the crafting of stories we were not a part of.
I throughly regard transparency to be of the upmost importance and key contributing factor when discussing the upkeep and future narratives of the artefacts we have become entwined with. Acknowledging that we cannot known and can only ever understand one elements in these objects story and our connection and interaction is limited in this sense. Approached to this extent must not be self indulgent. But a genuine interest to share and collaborate allows for further provenance research to commence, giving way to repatriation if this is seen as an appropriate next step.
Personally, I’ve found this to be a challenging task but altogether enriching, developing my appreciation and thought as regard to museum collections, ethnographic objects and dichotomies with regards to choice, authenticity and opportunity.
Further Reading:
Hartman, S. (2008). ‘Venus in Two Acts’. Small axe : a journal of criticism. 12(2), pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1
Hodge, C.J. (2018). ‘Decolonizing Collections-Based Learning: Experiential Observation as an interdisciplinary Framework for object study’, Museum Anthropology, 41(2), pp. 142-158. https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12180