From Racialisation to Reconciliation and Back: Ethical and conceptual dilemmas in the post-/de-colonial handling of human skeletal remains
Abstract:
Historically human remains and skulls in particular have served to produce various forms of scientific racialization and racism, confining people to fixed notions of identities and legitimizing violent systems of exploitation and o
ppression. Many academic institutions and museums have amassed thousands of mortal remains of people from all over the world, people whose lives and deaths are often directly and indirectly connected to numerous forms of injustice. Contemporary handling of these human remains aims to account and atone for the violent past, examining the provenance of particular human remains and often leading to their restitution. This contemporary practice can be seen as effective
—to an inevitably limited extend—in providing redress, reconciliation, rest for the deceased and spiritual and emotional ease for the living, and in shining light onto the historical injustices and their continuities. Nevertheless, it also carries certain ethical risks and poses several conceptual and practical problems. This presentation will present some of such problems inherent in the contemporary handling of skeletal remains, such as: the reliance on reified, essentialist and often racialised notions of ethnicity, nationality and indigeneity; an unwitting support of diverse political agendas at play; and the risks of reductive and excluding effects of the post-/de-colonial framework in which such research and restitutions are often framed. This critique applied to human skeletal remains can be applied to numerous other domains of contemporary society and post-/de-colonial scholarship and practice.
Bionote
Jonatan Kurzwelly is a Senior Researcher at the at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State (South Africa). He leads a DFG-funded project on “Contradictions in Deradicalisation Processes” and the NetIAS-funded interdisciplinary research group “Over Their Dead Bodies”. His research and writing focus predominantly on theories of personal and social identities, essentialism, nationalism, radicalisation and extremism.
Practical information
When? November 17, 13-14h30
Where? Auditorium D, Technicum, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Ghent
If you wish to join us, please send us an e-mail at tapas@Ugent.be so that we can reserve you a seat.
Van 13 tot 14.30 inderdaad. Locatie is: auditorium D, technicum