Make the loot

In this small educational work at the best sense of the term, Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein, both historian of art, lead their readers and their readers at the heart of the debates on the restitution of African cultural goods looted during the colonial period. They open, making way, multiple perspectives to connect these debates to the current dynamics of heritage, removal and collective commemoration which crosses most of the societies, in Europe as in Africa. Their brief test constitutes a first case study stimulating for the new collection of editions de la Sorbonne, “ The heritage worker », And combines convincingly empirical approach centered on objects and their biographies, and critical inventiveness in the footsteps of his illustrious model, the worker of potential literature.

To the lyrical flights of political speeches pretending to make the “ African heritage in Africa (P. 9-10), this small book immediately substitutes an observation followed by a question. A large number of “ African cultural goods », Materials and intangible (for example the sound recordings made since the start of XX^e century) are detained, preserved and exposed (or not) by museums outside the African continent. A majority of them have probably been extorted in one way or another in the violent context of colonization. These samples have not culturally destroyed African societies culturally and we can also bet that they have retained part of their cultural goods. Today as yesterday, it is up to them to say what their heritage is. Integrated into the prevailing networks of evaluation and exchange of cultural goods, disputed, the African cultural goods are undoubtedly the most visible, but they are not the only ones. This clarification posed, remains the substantive question which crosses the whole work: “ Why target things and bodies to repair colonial history ? (P. 11). The transformations induced by requests for restitution in the standards of circulation of cultural goods, in spaces and in museum practices allow them to go towards “ The new relational ethics »That the Sarr-Savoy report called for its wishes in 2018 ? Based on their research and contemporary debates, Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein meet three cases of restitution, in Senegal, Benin and Nigeria, to examine “ The dynamics of objects And what is played around.

Against a short -sighted reading presenting the restitution as a radical break, they dialogue by quotes interposed with the multiple voices which have been the debates for several decades, in a resounding or more discreet way: politicians and militants, artists, artists, researchers and researchers in Africa and on other continents. The small hundred of footsteps thus opens multiple access paths to these voices and these multiple positions, beyond the inevitable shortcuts of media controversies.

Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein take over in particular the analysis of the Nigerian archaeologist Ekpo Eyo, who underlines in 1994 how the simultaneous collection of human remains and artifacts in colonized African societies strengthened the Western conviction that there would be neither artists, nor identifiable owners in these societies, where even human remains vestiges that only Westerners can read. Hence the systematic anonymization of the artifacts and the timelessness attributed to them, both legitimizing their appropriation without return by the museums to which they were sold or given by colonial intermediaries. The fetishization of so-called primitive arts by artistic avant-garde at the start of XX^e century has strengthened this negation of Africans as producers and producing their cultural property. The estimate, which has circulated a lot in the debates, according to which 90 % of the African heritage would be held in European museums is thus a very ambivalent argument. It has the merit of advancing a striking figure, but she forgets that the colonial collections were very partial and partly carried out blind. The productions deemed too modern or too hybrid have been dismissed and a number of African cultural goods have remained incomprehensible or carefully held out of the reach of Europeans. Cultural goods held by non-African museums are in good regard for frozen remains, milestones rather than models with regard to dynamics that have continued without them. Restoring them is essential to give them more meaning and it would be really absurd to fall back on this occasion in the very colonial temptation consisting in defining from the outside “ THE »African cultural heritage. Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein invite you to break with this blinding arrogance by re -registering the question of African cultural goods in the long history of the restitution of the boot of war.

Make the booty is a classic operation accompanying any exit from war or domination situation. It is therefore important to analyze the devices put in place by ex-metropolises to dispense from the 1930s. By relying on legal research, Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein show how and when the legislation of protection of African cultural goods was built, then a whole argument for refusal of renditions backed by national legislation and more paradoxically international heritage protection. This development is part of a sequence straddling the colonial period and the first two decades of independence (late 1930s – late 1970s). The refusal of the restitution of African cultural goods must thus be reclassified as a derogation built from scratch by the right, in a logic of reaction ulcerated with decolonization, to come or effective, shared by most European states. Precisely retrace this story invites, as Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein show, to think about what we do with it. On the one hand, it would be absurd not to reform the devices born of a political conjunctural tension by law since they are the products. On the other hand, postcolonial studies in particular offer many tools to overcome this tension.

The objects to be returned or already returned are at the heart of the book. Politically, the gesture of restoring and its staging is more important than what is actually restored and, without surprise, the regalia – for example the statues of the sovereigns of the kingdom of Dahomey stolen in 1892 – remain the objects of predilection to try to reverse the symbolism of colonial looting. It is also tempting to give the floor to these objects, as does the film Dahomey From Mati Diop, awarded the Berlinale gold bear 2024. This approach nevertheless presents the risk of eclipizing once again the groups for which these objects make sense and to which the film gives the word in an unconvincing manner by integrating the extracts of a debate of which neither the object nor the participants are presented.

More classically, Maureen Murphy and Felicity Bodenstein mobilize two complementary approaches in art history, to which the debates around the restitution give a new relevance: on the one hand, the search for provenance to get the African cultural goods of the factifying anonymity which is still imposed on them in many non-African museums and which makes it possible to avoid the colonial framework of their acquisition. On the other hand, the most complete reconstruction possible of the biography of each cultural property to grasp the succession and competition of its social uses. Research in these two directions go through exchanges with actors and actresses living in different societies and not having the same use of objects, diversity which makes them as exciting as fertile in particular for the transformation of museum practices towards more social and intercultural inclusiveness. The presentation of the case of Benin City In Nigeria, notably bronzes, looted in 1897 and scattered by their sale on the art market is speaking in this regard. Especially since their restitution has been claimed since 1935/. The authors also evoke the difficult moults of the Royal Museum of Central Africa or AfricaMuseum of Tervuren and theHumboldt Forum from Berlin, which report the diversity of the solutions released, beyond the French case.

There is therefore a lot to glean in this brief essay, very successful, and we can only hope that he will convince many readers to join the research and collective reflection sites aroused by the necessary restitution of African cultural goods.