Description

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The Western Museum is an ideological, political, and economic disunity battleground. Calls for its decolonization have washed like great breakers over the institution; almost everyone today wants to "rethink the museum." But how many dare to question the very presuppositions of the universal museum itself?

In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. With a specific focus on the history of the Louvre, she centers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of the Enlightenment and colonialism, of a Europe that presents itself as the guardian of the heritage of all humanity.

Discussing the impasses in the representation of slavery and examining unsuccessful attempts to subvert the museum institution, Vergès outlines a radical horizon: to decolonize the museum truly is to implement a 'programme of absolute disorder,' inventing other ways of apprehending the human and non-human world that nourish collective creativity and bring justice and dignity to populations who have been dispossessed of it.

About the Author

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Françoise Vergès is a political scientist, activist, historian, film producer and public educator. She is the author of A Decolonial Feminism, A Feminist History of Violence and the forthcoming A Programme of Absolute Disorder. She is also a senior research fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UCL.

Melissa Thackway is an independent researcher and translator. She lectures in African Cinema at Sciences-Po and INALCO in Paris. Her recent translations include A Feminist Theory of Violence by Françoise Vergès, Contemporary African Cinema by Olivier Barlet, Tropical Dream Palaces: Cinema-Going in Colonial West Africa by Odile Goerg and African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction by Daniela Ricci.

Praise For…

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'Vergès offers, in the wake of Frantz Fanon, a powerful reflection which goes back through the history of the museum, which has never been a neutral space. Participating in the elaboration of a pseudo-universal, the Western museum is a tool of domination which, henceforth, must be deconstructed in a post-racist and post-capitalist world. Powerful and so relevant'
Diacritik

'The post-museum era has come. Museums without objects, museums of the present, living museums, museums of oral speech, museums of the great disorders of the world... There is no shortage of ideas for those who still know how to dream'
Hors-Serie

'A thought-provoking demonstration that should fascinate anyone interested in social justice, post-colonialism and the arts'
'Euronews'

'It is time for a complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition, which was designed to showcase work stolen from other cultures, argues French political scientist and curator Vergès'
'Publishers Weekly'