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A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonizing the Museum
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?
InÌý 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 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 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.
InÌý 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 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 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.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2023
48 people are currently reading
764 people want to read
About the author
Françoise Vergès
48Ìýbooks109ÌýfollowersFrançoise Vergès (born 23 January 1952) is a French political scientist, historian, film producer, independent curator, activist and public educator. Her work focuses on postcolonial studies and decolonial feminism.
Vergès was born in Paris, grew up in Réunion and Algeria, before returning to Paris to study and become a journalist. She moved to the US in 1983, studying at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley.
Vergès was born in Paris, grew up in Réunion and Algeria, before returning to Paris to study and become a journalist. She moved to the US in 1983, studying at the University of California, San Diego and Berkeley.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 18, 2024
fuck the French man me n my homies hate the French
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April 14, 2025Really good...goes beyond just critiquing representations and displays but picks up on the capitalism, nationalism and exploitation that created the western museum and sustain it today, and how it still functions as a tool of domination today. Couldve easily been 300 more pages
"Decolonization is not a posture; no institution can be decolonial unless society is decolonized, and the museum does not exist outside the social world that created it. Whether one frequents museums or not, they constitute one of the pillars of the national narrative, a demonstration of the level of civilization that the country has reached, and proof that it belongs to the "major nations" contributing to the evolution of humanity. Its social life is integrated into other state apparatuses and Capital. In advancing the hypothesis that its decolonization is impossible, we free ourselves of the injunction to create universal and national museums� seen as the ultimate sign of the cultural and artistic wealth of the nation or community; it is to ask ourselves why it is desirable, why its model is so powerful."
"Decolonization is not a posture; no institution can be decolonial unless society is decolonized, and the museum does not exist outside the social world that created it. Whether one frequents museums or not, they constitute one of the pillars of the national narrative, a demonstration of the level of civilization that the country has reached, and proof that it belongs to the "major nations" contributing to the evolution of humanity. Its social life is integrated into other state apparatuses and Capital. In advancing the hypothesis that its decolonization is impossible, we free ourselves of the injunction to create universal and national museums� seen as the ultimate sign of the cultural and artistic wealth of the nation or community; it is to ask ourselves why it is desirable, why its model is so powerful."
April 8, 2025
un essai tout aussi intéressant que riche, et qui donne des outils d'analyse du musée occidental pour le démanteler, anéantir le souffle impérialiste qu'il ne cesse de rejeter depuis sa création
June 15, 2023
la colonisation c'est naze
August 13, 2023
Le musée est-il si innocent que ça ? L'annexion ou l'appropriation des cultures sont-elles neutralisées par la volonté de connaître ? Vergès répond à ces questions en appliquant avec férocité une méthode décoloniale effective.
September 10, 2024
Jamais de théorie sans pratique, et l'introduction aux luttes décoloniales par rapport au musée, qui concentre un certain nombre d'enjeux est pas mal du tout.
Gros plus pour le nombre de références incroyables que ça donne tout en étant bien expliquées, la biblio est super riche
Gros plus pour le nombre de références incroyables que ça donne tout en étant bien expliquées, la biblio est super riche
May 8, 2023
Thème complexe, habilement traité avec une réflexion pertinente. Digne de Françoise Vergès.
Le petit bémol : parfois compliqué, nécessite un bon bagage culturel en histoire de l'art / muséologie.
Le petit bémol : parfois compliqué, nécessite un bon bagage culturel en histoire de l'art / muséologie.
July 21, 2024
dense et exigeant, on aimerait presque que chacun des chapitres soit un livre à part entière. dans programme de désordre absolu, décoloniser le musée, françoise verges nous nourrit d’une grande richesse de perspectives sur l’histoire coloniale et capitaliste du patrimoine et du musée, et sur les façons de déjouer et de détruire pour penser et construire de nouveaux espaces culturels en ébullition permanente. chaque chapitre nous permet d’accumuler connaissances, contre-histoires et arguments sur comment le musée occidental et le patrimoine ont été et sont utilisés comme outil de domination coloniale et sur ce que les artist•es, penseur•euses et personnes en résistance ont pu imaginer et mettre en place pour contrer ces pratiques et ces récits.
January 6, 2025
Mais uma vez, a Vergès não falha.
CrÃtica muito sagaz do capitalismo colonial e da necessidade de um “programa de desordem absolutaâ€�, como diria Fanon. Desconstrói o argumento ocidental e capitalista, mostrando que é imprescindÃvel dar novos significados ao vocabulário que já conhecemos.
CrÃtica muito sagaz do capitalismo colonial e da necessidade de um “programa de desordem absolutaâ€�, como diria Fanon. Desconstrói o argumento ocidental e capitalista, mostrando que é imprescindÃvel dar novos significados ao vocabulário que já conhecemos.
June 30, 2024
Un livre qui m'a beaucoup interpellée, j'ai appris des choses et réfléchi.
Moins convaincue par les pistes données à la fin.
Moins convaincue par les pistes données à la fin.
August 25, 2024
TL;DR A somewhat dense but excellent review of the current state of ethnological museums, and possible futures of decoloniality.
I’ve read three books this year and one article¹ on museums, their current status and their future. I’m reading completely as a lay person; I found that approach a relatively limited one for some of the material presented in this book.
Vergès reviews the present state of “universal� museums, particularly the ethnological ones of the European former colonisers: the Louvre, the British Museum, and the like. The French, Germans, English, Belgians and Portuguese all looted and rampaged all around Africa, bringing back tons of Africa’s heritage to the metropole. Much of this heritage now lies neglected and dusty in the storerooms and basements of museums, although a small fraction is on show in vitrines in galleries for tourists—generally not African—to ogle at without understanding. Because these dislocated objects are without context, and cannot have context where they are: many were created for community use, worship, memory, etc, to serve and to perish with that use, something they cannot any longer do.
The trouble, of course, as activists point out with increasing volume, is the concept of the “universal� museum. Calls for repatriation of African holdings are met by museum directors� and creators� assertions that these “objects� (a problematic term in itself) are safer where they are, and serve the purpose of educating the world about humanity. They, you see, are the rightful educators and custodians to enable this, in their minds. Vergès reminds us that what is in fact happening is Europe seeing itself as the true cradle of Civilisation (because of the Enlightenment): superior, of course, the true arbiters of art and taste.
"But even if we did accept the universal museum’s transformation into a depositary institution for all of humanity’s works, concrete, practical, and ideological questions are carefully avoided in the text: who would be their handlers? Who would be the directors? Who would write the catalogue? Who would draw up the categories? Who would fund this? Who would authorize loans? Who would decide which objects to include or remove?"
There are many other problems with the Western museum as it is: the role of “philanthropy� in artwashing, gentrification, whitewashing, obscuring the history of slavery and colonialism (and the role of those same custodian nations in this), and so on. Vergès also takes us through a history I didn’t previously know: Napoleon rampaging through Europe and divesting conquered nations of their art treasures, many of which ended up in the Louvre—so there’s actual precedent for the looting that later happened in Africa and other places.
Vergès ends the book by zooming into Réunion as a creation of France, and how it’s evolving its own history even as it grapples with its identity. As such, Vergès and others founded the Maison des civilisations et de l’unité Réunionnaise (MCUR), a “museum without objects� that aimed to counter the idea of the Western-style universal museum, centring Marronage, and moving away from the universal museum’s fixation on visual respresentation. In some ways the project failed, derailed by politics; but it set a precedent for imagining museums in new ways, Vergès says.
Is the persistence of the Western, ethnological museum about money? To some extent it is: these museums draw crowds, and it makes some kind of sense that they’d want to preserve that, to not be emptied through the repatriation of the material heritage they have that was looted. But that’s clearly not the full story, as so much of that heritage is not on display but in storage. It seems that it’s a lot more about prestige, and superiority, as Vergès eloquently argues about the origins of the Louvre. Perhaps it’s also about control, and power. And, more than likely, with respect to material heritage from previously colonised peoples: it’s simple epistemicide.
Finally, remembering the words of Aimé Césaire:
"And the museums of which M. Caillois is so proud, not for one minute does it cross his mind that, all things considered, it would have been better not to have needed them; that Europe would have done better to tolerate the non-European civilizations at its side, leaving them alive, dynamic� and prosperous, whole and not mutilated; that it would have been better to let them develop and fulfill themselves than to present for our admiration, duly labeled, their dead and scattered parts; that anyway, the museum by itself is nothing; that it means nothing, that it can say nothing, when smug self-satisfaction rots the eyes, when a secret contempt for others withers the heart, when racism, admitted or not, dries up sympathy; that it means nothing if its only purpose is to feed the delights of vanity; that after all, the honest contemporary of Saint Louis, who fought Islam but respected it, had a better chance of knowing it than do our contemporaries (even if they have a smattering of ethnographic literature), who despise it. No, in the scales of knowledge all the museums in the world will never weigh so much as one spark of human sympathy."
Is there an ethical future for museums? A Programme of Absolute Disorder is one attempt to imagine one.
Many thanks to Pluto Press and to Edelweiss for an early copy.
¹ AlÃrio Karina (2022) Against and beyond the Museum, Third Text, 36:6, 651-662, DOI: .
Further reading:
Ghosts of the British Museum � Noah Angell
Fifteen Colonial Thefts � Sela Adjei, Yann LeGall
May 4, 2024
This is a glorious and necessary text on the failings of so-called "decolonizing" museum work.
I love the notion of "waywardness" as an antidote to legislated institutional and systemic norms in society. Wayward for the win!
Some of the language was compelling to me: "universal vocation" ... "capitalism's protean capacity" ... "the prism of structural racism" ... "life in rehearsal" (attributed to Ruth Wilson Gilmore) ... and a usurping of "space invaders" (for "colonizers") ... museums as "illegal morgues." Brilliant.
At the same time, I was conflicted about the title of this one. Decolonization is defined as the solution to the "programme of absolute disorder" that is colonization. The name is provocative, but also obtuse. I kept forgetting what this text was about.
The other things I didn't like are the things I tend to hate with these kinds of texts. Academese galour. Endless paragraphs (seriously, look into the return key). Grandiose claims repeated until they feel factual. The utterly Western slant.
I also feel that texts centred on art and interactive experiences can never quite do them justice. The experiential understanding is impossible to get. And there's essentially no photos or links to videos or any other means of truly grokking the material offered here. A shame.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Pluto Press for the advance copy.
I love the notion of "waywardness" as an antidote to legislated institutional and systemic norms in society. Wayward for the win!
Some of the language was compelling to me: "universal vocation" ... "capitalism's protean capacity" ... "the prism of structural racism" ... "life in rehearsal" (attributed to Ruth Wilson Gilmore) ... and a usurping of "space invaders" (for "colonizers") ... museums as "illegal morgues." Brilliant.
At the same time, I was conflicted about the title of this one. Decolonization is defined as the solution to the "programme of absolute disorder" that is colonization. The name is provocative, but also obtuse. I kept forgetting what this text was about.
The other things I didn't like are the things I tend to hate with these kinds of texts. Academese galour. Endless paragraphs (seriously, look into the return key). Grandiose claims repeated until they feel factual. The utterly Western slant.
I also feel that texts centred on art and interactive experiences can never quite do them justice. The experiential understanding is impossible to get. And there's essentially no photos or links to videos or any other means of truly grokking the material offered here. A shame.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Pluto Press for the advance copy.
October 27, 2023
Vergès pointe avec brio tous les paradoxes soulevés par l'institution du musée français, entre volonté d'universel et racisme systémique. Si cet ouvrage comporte une partie théorique, il est aussi plein d'exemples et donne des pistes pour penser le musée autrement, et plus généralement, la fonction de l'art.
May 10, 2025
please give me a thesis statement at the start of each section.
like the points i teased out were good and interesting, but the work itself was so difficult to follow and understand: like this is a book meantfor the general public, but it doesn't read like it.
like the points i teased out were good and interesting, but the work itself was so difficult to follow and understand: like this is a book meantfor the general public, but it doesn't read like it.
March 21, 2024
Leiammmmmmm
December 26, 2024
Essencial.
January 9, 2025
Leitura essencial pra nós da área de museus.
March 29, 2025
Learned a lot highly recommend
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