Beyond the Universal machine
Beyond the Universal Machine is an ethnography of curators and cultural producers who grapple with Europe’s colonial heritage and the institution of the anthropological museum of world across major European cities. This book brings the anthropology of art and curatorial practice into conversation with the critical study of heritage and museums in order to build an understanding of how an expanded curatorial field can offer strategies, methods, resources and concepts for thinking about the narratives offered by both museums and anthropology. A central prism through which this book unfolds is an approach to curating as a three-dimensional narrative, linking the situated, concrete practices of curators in making exhibitions and rethinking museums with the wider cultural technologies of narrative world-making. The book is based on almost a decade of research with independent publishing houses, neighbourhood associations, artists, curators, and some of Europe's largest cultural heritage and museum institutions. The author traces how cultural producers rework the legacy of the museum as a universalising machine, exploring artistic and curatorial narratives of worlding that do not fall into the trap of identitarian provincialism and relativism. Through several case studies drawn from Berlin, Marseille, and Milan, Beyond the Universal Machineunravels hopeful struggles for producing a more just and humane public cultural imagination of a shared world.
In preparation for publication in open-access format in the book series Beyond Universalism edited by Prof Markus Messling (Saarland University / KHK CURE).
In preparation for publication in open-access format in the book series Beyond Universalism edited by Prof Markus Messling (Saarland University / KHK CURE).