Global France Seminar presents, Felwine Sarr “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage by France: Where Are We Now?”
MIT Building 14E-304 160 MEMORIAL DR, CAMBRIDGE, MA, United StatesAbstract: Restitution of African heritage (cultural artifacts) by former colonial powers is an entangled issue. The questions it raises are not limited to those of legitimate ownership of objects. Its implications are political, symbolic, philosophical and relational. It opens up a reflection on history, memory, the colonial past, the genesis and development of Western museums and ethnographic collections. It also allows us to think about the different conceptions of cultural heritage, the different ways of exhibiting objects, as well as their circulation and translocations. Finally, it allows us to think about the larger question of the transmission of cultural heritage and that of the trace. I want to share with you some lessons from this experience related to history, memory, traces, re-appropriation and relationality. Bio: Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic and writer. He is Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies and African & African American Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after teaching at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he is Professeur Titulaire des Universités and agrégé in economics. His academic work focuses on economics, the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology and the history of religious ideas. He […]
