Clark’s essay considers the return of the Benin bronzes as a case study for these missed opportunities and alternative paths forward. It follows the various and sometimes competing means by which Benin bronzes came “home:” whether to the postcolonial nation of Nigeria, to the Oba of Benin himself, or to the controversial public-private partnership known as the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA).
The essay further considers how these various means of return, and these various meanings of “home,” can work against one another and can be co-opted as neoliberal and neocolonial forms of control.
It also explores alternative paths forward through the framework of relational ethics. Sarr and Savoy first applied the phrase to the return of African cultural objects in their 2018 report.
The essay expands on Sarr and Savoy’s report and builds from Native American and Indigenous scholars like Margaret Kovach and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, who identify opportunities to remake relations as a means of restitution. This includes remaking relations between indigenous communities, Western institutions, and postcolonial nation-states. It also includes remaking relations between human beings and the more-than-human world, including spirits of the ancestors, outside the systems of Western knowledge and value production.
