Editors Njabulo Chipangura, Alexandra Bounia have found experts who highlight the voices of, and the decolonial methodologies used by, those who have been working in museums in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The wide range of case studies includes museums in Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as the African diaspora and African collections held outside of the continent.
Throughout the volume, contributors consider how western museological frameworks have perpetuated colonial classifications and epistemologies, from missionary-led appropriations to the categorisation of living cultures as ‘things’ to be appropriated and objectified in hegemonic museum exhibitions, often in national museums.
The volume also questions whose stories are told by museums and examines how indigenous communities are preserving and presenting their own cultural objects in local settings.
This vital book offers a call to action for the democratization of expertise by giving source communities agency to share their own knowledge on the meaning of living cultures from Indigenous perspectives and asks what a rethinking of African museums may look like.
Museologies of Africa consists of three parts:
- Part 1 Reconsidering the role of state-supported museums
- Part 2 Community museums (re)defined
- Part 3 Reconsidering and enhancing African museologies
