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A problem arises when a museum is not a
place for the affi rmation of a national identity
but, as anthropologist Benoît de L’Estoile
indicates, is seen rather as a museum of the
Other; when the museum conserves objects
procured from somewhere else and assumes
the right to speak about these Others (or in
the name of the Others) and claims to declare
the truth about them.
Excerpt from Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, Report
on the Restitution of the African Cultural Patrimony.
Towards a New Relational Ethic, page 37.
Left Only with Our Eyes with Which to Cry
A report submitted to French President
Emmanuel Macron by two experts engaged
to study the modalities of the possible future restitution
of works of material culture from French
museums to their African countries of origin surprised
even many of the observers most favorably
disposed to the idea because of its virulence, its
simplistic bias, its lack of nuance, and the radical
nature of its proposals. However, the result should
have been expected given the choice of the individuals
selected to accomplish this diffi cult task, since
they were known beforehand to espouse ideological
positions that would effectively disqualify
them from engaging in the objective and dispassionate
analysis that such a sensitive task requires
and deserves.
In a speech given at the Collège de France in
March 2017, one of the authors, Bénédicte Savoy,
claimed to have been “horrifi ed and struck with
incredulous consternation” at the sight of a statue
of Champollion with his boot resting on the crumbling
head of a Pharaoh that sits in the venerable
institution’s courtyard. She confi rmed the nature
of her position in an article in the Süddeutsche
Zeitung of July 20, 2017, in which she compared
Berlin’s Humboldt Forum to Tschernobyl. She had
left the Forum after two years there, denouncing
the “leaden hood” that covered the dubious provenance
of collections that had been assembled
during the colonial period and were now being
prepared for display in the new museum.
As for the other author, Felwine Sarr was excoriating
France and President Macron on the eve of
the latter’s conference in Ouagadougou. Perhaps
having been selected as the arbiter of the restitution
question altered the point of view he had
expressed in an article published in Le Monde, in
which he wrote, “Africans, there is nothing we
By Bertrand Goy
should expect from France that we cannot offer
ourselves!”
The “critic friends” with which these two experts
rapidly surrounded themselves lacked any real
qualifi cation and were, in fact, “critics” in name
only. Some, like Kwame Opoku, Souleymane Bachir
Diagne, and Christiane Falgayrettes-Leveau,
were “sympathizers,” while others were resolutely
militant, like Marie-Cécile Zinsou—the Amazon
of Behanzin where defending the illustrious monarch’s
patrimony is concerned—and His Excellency
Louis-Georges Tin, prime minister of the African
Diaspora and already deeply involved in the
restitution saga. Also among this cadre is Hamady
Bokoum, curator of the new Musée des Civilisations
Noires in Dakar, who obviously is one of the
most biased since he is having trouble fi lling the
galleries of his enormous edifi ce.
In reading this report, which became publicly
available before it was even offi cially released,
one cannot help but be struck with “incredulous
consternation.” We would expect more rigor in
reasoning from such brilliant intellectuals, and it
is particularly shocking that they employed convenient
generalizations that led them to formulate
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