7.12. The Afterlives of Empire: Archives, Museums, and Memory Politics

Research question: Restitution is presented as a "reparation" policy. We wonder if it can also be considered a memory policy. To answer this question, we will consider the case of Argentina. The country has carried out a large number of restitutions over the past 20 years. These restitutions comply with various national laws that authorize and organize these procedures. Most cases involved human remains that were in museums and were "returned" to the places where their communities currently live. These communities claim that these remains belong to their "ancestors". The "original" location, geographically speaking, may be an area that does not fit the current political division between countries. This was the case in Argentina and Paraguay, for example, when the remains of a girl belonging to the Aché ethnic group were successfully returned. This case involved Argentina, where some of the girl’s remains were stored, Germany, where some of her remains were sent for anthropological analysis; and Paraguay, where her community, descended from the original Aché, currently resides. We will focus on the actions of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales (U.N.L.P). The question we wish to pose here is what these restitutions are intended to achieve. We address one possible answer; restitution is a way of doing justice to the past. Methodology: We will use an analytical-conceptual approach, contrasting different sources such as: newspapers, academic texts, and regulatory documents. Keywords: Restitution – Museo de Ciencias Naturales – cultural identity – ownership Key findings: We maintain that restitution seeks to achieve a specific type of justice. We analyze this type of justice in relation to the construction of a collective and pluralistic memory. We examine whether restitutions have been carried out within a framework of respect and tolerance and whether they have contributed to generating a broader cutural identity.

The research examines the Soviet Ereveld and its newly opened museum as a compelling case of the application of sharp power: a strategic and manipulative form of influence that weaponises memory and injects distortions into democratic understandings of the past. Framed as a humanitarian initiative, the site promotes a heroised version of the Soviet military legacy within a European context. The case demonstrates how memory can become an instrument of power precisely where democratic societies assume neutrality and cultural openness. Methodologically, the study employs a multilayered qualitative design combined with critical theoretical perspectives. The first part focuses on the contextual analysis of the Soviet Ereveld. The second examines spatial and narrative dimensions through visual and narrative analysis and critical museology. The third draws on autoethnographic observation from a field visit to analyse visitor experience. The final part employs media and critical discourse analysis to investigate communication strategies and public-facing initiatives used systematically to construct the site’s legitimacy and symbolic authority. Special attention is paid to the deconstruction of the museum’s colonial representation of non-Russian peoples of the former USSR — including Ukrainians, Georgians, and communities from Central Asia. The museum, partially funded by the Russian government despite claims of political neutrality, effectively localises the Russian state-driven “myth of victory” within the Dutch context, gaining popularity as a contemporary cultural venue suitable for tourism, leisure, and school visits. Unlike in Eastern Europe — where Soviet memorials such as Prague’s Olšany Cemetery provoke active public debate — in the Netherlands, the incorporation of Soviet soldiers into narratives of liberation in a region they never actually freed largely goes unquestioned. The case shows how democratic practices of memory may be turned against democracy itself. This dynamic merits interdisciplinary attention, and discussing it with memory scholars globally would be particularly valuable.

'Looking back', the new exhibition at Berlin's Museum Treptow, is the first permanent exhibition to engage with Germany's colonial past. Co-curated by museum staff and Berlin-based activists, the exhibition centres around the anticolonial protest by women and men recruited within formerly colonised African countries to perform traditional cultural practices at the 'First German Colonial Exhibition' in Berlin in 1896. Building on low-key notions of resistance in contexts of violence (Därmann, Widerstände, 2021) and frameworks for alternative memory politics (Azoulay, Potential History, 2019), I ask to what extent the co-curators were successful in questioning dominant Eurocentric narratives, reversing the gaze and producing a more inclusive and pluralistic notion of German memory politics. Taking a small municipal museum as a case study, I employ a comparative approach to analysing the curatorial concept from 2017 and the revised one from 2021. I particularly focus on the various forms of protest and resistance presented in the exhibitions. I also draw on conversations I had with three of the co-curators during visits. By investigating how the exhibitions situate the historical resistance within the context of ongoing anticolonial protest and community-led biographical research about Black communities in Berlin, I assess how the co-curators challenge Eurocentric binaries and oversimplistic perpetrator-victim divisions, without downplaying colonial power imbalances. In considering the range of artistic methods used in the exhibitions, I explore how to use imaginative and speculative memory practices to document and highlight agency, protest and resistance when archival material is lacking, being destroyed or lost in contexts of (historical) violence, oppression and disinformation. I finally discuss tensions that arose between collaborating partners about the methodologies employed and the curatorial concept of the exhibition as a forum for debate or a safe(r) space for Berlin's Black communities and anticolonial activists.

Museums, as repositories of colonial collections, have over the past few decades become central to debates about the deeply political and power-laden nature of collecting and museumisation. These discussions have led to a critical rethinking of museums’ roles and to the rise of provenance research. The methodological challenges of applying postcolonial theory to the Soviet context raise crucial questions: How do community experiences in the provinces of Soviet republics - often representing extreme cases of the internal “Orient” - illuminate the nature of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union as modern “empires of knowledge”? There has been limited reflection on how present-day collections were shaped by the centralization of community treasures in the process of constructing homogenized national cultures under the socialist banner. By shifting attention to local communities, my paper focuses on Svaneti - Georgia’s northwestern mountainous region - designated by Tsarist and Soviet collectors as a treasure trove of antiquities. Beyond stories of imperial looting and the community memories that sustained them, it explores the complex interplay among local, national, and imperial actors during the collecting boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these objects, which can be traced, were successfully reclaimed from the Georgian State Museum in Tbilisi in the 1920s–1930s to sustain local community practices. Analyzing travelogues, field diaries, collection documentation, and oral accounts, I argue that community objects, which mobilized local curators, played a crucial role in enabling the Svans of northwestern Georgia’s highlands to assert ownership not only over their past but also in shaping their visions of the future.