Postcolonial museums inherit the political functions of colonial archaeology

Evidence

The link between Ap’s occupation and assassination is not at all accidental. For museums, and the museumizing imagination, are both profoundly political. That his museum was instituted by a distant Jakarta shows us how the new nation-state of Indonesia learned from its immediate ancestor, the colonial Netherlands East Indies. The present proliferation of museums around Southeast Asia suggests a general process of political inheriting at work. Any understanding of this process requires a consideration of the novel nineteenth-century colonial archaeology that made such museums possible. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 669

Categorization

• XREF: Continuity of colonial forms into the postcolonial state directly scaffolds the Islamophobia field’s treatment of how colonial categories persist post-independence. — connects to: Colonial states museumized sacred sites to legitimize themselves as guardians of tradition — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 673; Defenders reframed a colonial-inherited practice as indigenous African heritage — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 4490; An enlarged state concept transforms postcolonial-state theory away from instrumental models (+1 more)

Related

• Colonial archaeology gave postcolonial states an inherited depth of field. (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial states museumized sacred sites to legitimize themselves as guardians of tradition (similarity 0.79)
• Museumizing and education of the colonized were launched together as twin colonial projects (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Defenders reframed a colonial-inherited practice as indigenous African heritage #exemplifies (0.80) — , The Rod and the Child, 4490
• An enlarged state concept transforms postcolonial-state theory away from instrumental models #expands (0.75)