TY - JOUR
TI - From myth to rewriting the museum history of war trophies from the Kanak uprisings: lessons learned from two letters from the Anthropology Laboratory of the Musée de l’Homme
AU - Patin, Christelle
TI - From myth to rewriting the museum history of war trophies from the Kanak uprisings: lessons learned from two letters from the Anthropology Laboratory of the Musée de l’Homme
AB - The myth of the disappearance of the head of the Kanak chief Ataï from the collections of the Musée de l’Homme has contributed to the public image of an opaque institution, governed by practices of epistemic silencing. However, the institutional reality turns out to be more complex and mosaic-like. Two unpublished institutional documents, dated 1987 and 1988, shed light on the games played by laboratory directors in the elaboration of this narrative, and their contextualization in the prism of representations of decolonisation. In this way, they are helping to rewrite the institutional history of New Caledonian anthropological collections.
VL - 2025
IS - Volume 57
PY - 2025
SN - 0078-6500
C1 - 2657-5337
SP - 75
EP - 86
DO - 10.4467/00786500.ORG.25.005.22609
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/organon/article/du-mythe-a-la-reecriture-de-lhistoire-museale-des-trophees-de-guerre-des-insurrections-kanak-les-enseignements-de-deux-documents-epistolaires-du-laboratoire-danthropologie-du-musee-de-lhomme
KW - anthropology
KW - the Kanak chief Ataï
KW - colonial history
KW - heritage’s invisibilisation
KW - human remains
KW - New-caledonia
KW - museum