Full Description
'A complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition' - Publishers Weekly
'The Western museum is a strange place... a cemetery of anonymous dead without sepulchres'
In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès strips away the veneer of the universal Western museum to reveal its origins as a warehouse for the spoils of colonial warfare.
By exploring the history of the Louvre, and following the radical tradition of Frantz Fanon, she argues that the modern institution cannot just be fixed with a more diverse board or by finding new ways to display the art.
Instead, she demands a 'post-museum': a space that rejects the financialization of art, acknowledges the bloody history of its collections, and prioritises the labour and dignity of those who clean, guard and inhabit its halls.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. A Programme of Absolute Disorder
2. The Museum: A Battlefield
3. The Louvre, Napoleon, Capture, the Slave
4. Black is the model, white the frame
5. A Museum without Objects
Epilogue: Decolonial Tactics
Notes
