ABSTRACT

Through a close examination of the exhibition Afterlives of Slavery, which opened on 6 October 2017 at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, this article interrogates the issues and contradictions emerging from thinking through decoloniality – from within the halls of an ethnographic museum located at the centre of the former colonial metropole. In recent years, the Tropenmuseum has been engaged in a process of reckoning with its position within the history of empire. To which ends does decolonial thinking enter the institution? And where does the museum situate itself within broader processes of memorialisation and heritagisation of slavery and colonialism? Drawing from extensive fieldwork and interviews with key informants, this article will attempt to answer these questions by exploring the tensions an exhibition such as Afterlives of Slavery has opened inside the museum.

摘要

通过仔细研究奴隶制的来世展览于 2017 年 10 月 6 日在阿姆斯特丹的 Tropenmuseum 开幕，这篇文章从位于前殖民大都市中心的民族志博物馆的大厅内，探讨了通过非殖民化思考所出现的问题和矛盾。近年来，热带博物馆一直在评估其在帝国历史中的地位。去殖民思想进入机构的目的是什么？博物馆在更广泛的奴隶制和殖民主义纪念和传承过程中处于什么位置？本文将通过广泛的实地调查和对主要知情人的采访，试图通过探讨诸如“奴隶制来世”等展览在博物馆内开幕的紧张局势来回答这些问题。