Session leader: Cláudia Garradas & Sofia Carvalho

Title/General theme of the session: “Places of speech of those researching colonialism and coloniality in museums”

Session Summary:

Colonial narratives in maritime museums: the tides of an investigation

Maritime museums have played a strong role in the construction of national identities, extolling maritime conquests and their heroes. This is evident in colonizing nations such as Portugal, the United Kingdom and France. However, these narratives, while promoting a sense of cultural identity, often obscure the impacts of colonialism. In the course of my doctoral research, on the representation of Mediterranean culture in three maritime museums in the Mediterranean – Malta, Algeria and Israel (the first two colonized) – museological issues around colonialism put me at the heart of these problems. Having seen the need to re-evaluate my project to take these issues into account, I bring to the discussion the texts and methodologies of the authors who have guided me in observing the Contemporary Mediterranean through post-colonial maritime narratives, as well as my own questions.

Afrolatinoamericanity: multiple legacies and dysphonia in a trajectory of epistemological choices and refutations
This communication addresses a reflection on how a historical-cultural legacy constitutes a point of view marked by colonialism and coloniality. How belonging to a multiracial, multicultural and racist society influences epistemological choices. The complexity of being part of a contradictory and violent social place of miscegenation, of a social structure marked by the construction of a collective imaginary managed by discourses of power and structures of control inherited from the colonial period. A complex intertwining of the categories of gender, race and class. The point of view of the historical and political subject, above all with a group social location in what we call Afro-Latin Americanity. Aspects that certainly led to work in Social Museology and the consequent direction of an investigation into decolonial museological practices that some museums are developing in Brazil and Portugal.

Sociomuseology-Zami: Why?
“Zami” means “women who work together as friends and lovers” and was proposed by Audre Lorde (1982) as a synonym for black lesbianism in the diaspora. The purpose of naming a “Zami Sociomuseology” is to demarcate a black lesbian, Afrodiasporic and decolonial epistemic dispute at the School of
Sociomuseology thinking (Primo & Moutinho, 2020). From a theoretical perspective, LGBT+ Protagonism and Social Museology (Baptista & Boita, 2014) and Black Lesbian Museology (Escobar, 2021) are central to problematizing intersectional discrimination (Crenshaw 2002), especially the close link between racism, lesbophobia, xenophobia and whiteness (Bento, 2015) in museum spaces and academic research in Portugal. The importance of self-definition by the Zami communities themselves about their daily experiences buried in gender coloniality is highlighted,
race, class and sexuality in the field of Museology.

Whiteness and the decolonization of museums: building a personal archive
Linda Tuhiwai Smith reminds us that decolonizing methodologies in scientific work implies decolonizing ourselves (Smith, 2021). It was in this sense that, between July and December 2023, I conducted a research internship in São Paulo (Brazil), whose actions stemmed from one main objective: to decolonize myself, in order to decolonize research. As a white, Portuguese woman (among many other social positions I occupy), I inevitably gather a colonial imaginary that overflows and reverberates in the research I carry out. The aim of this communication is to present the personal archive that was built up during this period; serving as a fundamental instrument and process for the research to be readjusted to be carried out from – and about – whiteness.

Name of the speakers and their paper titles:

Colonial narratives in maritime museums: the tides of an investigation | Cláudia Garradas

Afrolatinoamericanity: multiple legacies and dysphonia in a trajectory of epistemological choices and refutations | Samira Amara Alves

Sociomuseology-Zami: Why? | Geanine Vargas Escobar

Whiteness and the decolonization of museums: building a personal archive | Sofia Alexandre Carvalho

Moderators-commentators of the session:

Rita Rainho
Teresa Mendes Flores

Free Entry!

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