La douce France has outdone herself yet again.
A basic post-colonial inventory, to situate us:
Item: One (1) human head. Mummified. Provenance: New Zealand.
Item: One (1) patrimoine national français. Gloriously preserved. Exquisitely curated. Contents: châteaux, medieval armaments, lighthouses, churches, monasteries, stolen Maori human remains, etc. Provenance: ci et là, eh beh je sais plus mais c’est beau, hein?
Item: One (1) insane, self-righteous, paranoid-nationalist ministre de la culture. Provenance: Toulouse / one of François Fillon’s many deep, dark closets.
French Debate: Is Maori Head Body Part or Art? [NYT]
Rouen n’en fait qu’à sa tête [Libération]
Thing is, one of the many insidious things about colonialism is that it causes people to traffic in human remains. And then to put stolen remains, like this mummified Maori head, on display in museums. And to call those stolen remains part of one’s own “patrimoine national.”
One of the many insidious things about European metropoles’ tendency toward post-colonial oblivion is that those practices don’t get revised once the whole colonial project has been soundly denounced by basically everyone.
Now, it’s true that there are bits and pieces of Barbaric Peoples all over the damned place in museums in the west. (Interestingly, though the NYT claims there are 30 Maori heads in the Museum of Natural History, it’s not possible to find them through the museum’s website. “No, no, no heads here!” Says the site. “Pretty photographs and mildly condescending language in abundance, but nope! No actual heads! Move along, move along!”)
But we all love France, reader, because really, only in France could the minister of culture get away with freezing a city tribunal to insist that a mummified head (a human head, reader. a head. that once belonged to someone.) should not be returned to its Antipodean home, on the grounds that such an “atteinte injustifiée au patrimoine national” might set a dangerous precedent that would cause the historic and artistic centers of France to dissolve.
… I had written additional commentary. But it is completely unnecessary, I realize. Atteinte! Injustifiée! Patrimoine fucking national! Is anyone else snarfing her coffee / falling about / trying not to burst into horrified, humiliated tears?
Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance, bercée de tendre insouciance, je t’ai gardée dans ma tête mummifiée… Douce France… la la la…
7 comments
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October 26, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Hilaire
Unfuckingbelievable. Unbelievable. The ignorance, it is stunning. Snarfing my morning tea, it’s true.
October 26, 2007 at 3:30 pm
squadratomagico
I want to comment… but I’m speechless.
October 26, 2007 at 8:26 pm
DMG
He hasn’t gotten away with it yet. The law in france is extremely clear about this. He can’t sidestep it forever
16-1 du code civil, issu de la loi bioéthique de 1994. «Le corps humain, ses éléments et ses produits ne peuvent faire l’objet d’un droit patrimonial.»
October 26, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Neophyte
DMG — right. They’re also not going to get away with DNA testing for new immigrants, and so on. However.
1) Who’s “he”? This was an initiative of the ministère de la culture, not some act of supreme will on the part of Nicolas Sarkozy. Specificity is due.
2) Law is not the point. “Getting away with it” is not the point. This is about a cultural phenomenon, a broad and frighteningly subtle tendency toward drastically insensitive behavior where France’s colonial past is concerned. I hope what you mean is that a wave of resistance will arise out of this, which will point to the fundamental inconsistency of French law and French cultural practices, perhaps resulting in a radical re-assessment of what “patrimoine” means, what belongs to whom, and what the politics of cultural appropriation on the part of institutions like the Musée Guimet actually means. But the problem is not whether or not “le droit patrimonial” applies to human remains, Maori or otherwise. The problem is willful nationalistic oblivion. And it is tremendously disturbing.
October 26, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Rhetorical Tranny
you def hit on this, but what is so effing brilliant about the situation is that the ministre de la culture is standing up and declaring, in no uncertain terms, that france’s colonial past is both an integral part of its history, and something that he is proud to have as a part of his national heritage.
revolutionary, or another crack in the surface of national identity already held together by the crazy glue that is cognitive dissonance?
October 28, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Belle
Ah, the joys and tribulations of a sparkling colonial past. If they return a head, don’t they then have to return all the mummies they have? And if they do, then everybody else is going to have to, and then there’s the whole Elgin Marbles thing… ah, Neo, you are a true troublemaker.
Good job!
November 7, 2007 at 12:58 pm
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