Description
"My poster or presentation will focus on memory and memorialization, particularly as it relates to archival practices around human remains of the disabled. Skeletons and mummified remains of nearly 30,000 people dwell in the vaults of the Smithsonian Institution. Museums around the world have large collections of human remains as well. Most of these bodies were collected with very little cataloging data which further removes them from their humanity. The bodies of women and men who were loved by their families and might have been honored by them in death became mere objects for study. Bone rooms are “the worst legacies of colonial anthropology in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” (Redman, 2016) I am keenly fascinated by how storing these entities relates to major power imbalances such as personhood. When these bodies lack appropriate description, they become natally alienated and ahistorical so it is easy for institutions to project meaning on them. This ties into the larger concept of the “displacement of cultural heritage”.