Restoring artifacts to original sites is more artificial than keeping them transplanted
Evidence
Well, if the exportation of the cornices was in effect an arbitrary act, if the Cloisters in New York are an artificial mosaic of all cultures (following a logic of the capitalist centralization of value), their reimportation to the original site is even more artificial: it is a total simulacrum that links up with “reality” through a complete circumvolution. … The cloister should have stayed in New York in its simulated environment, which at least fooled no one. Repatriating it is nothing but a supplementary subterfuge, acting as if nothing had happened and indulging in retrospective hallucination. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 42
Categorization
- XREF: Directly useful for the hyperreality/authenticity debate; the repatriation-as-simulacrum argument is a strong counterpoint to museum restitution discourse today. — connects to: Preservation requires removing something from its immediate existence — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1059; Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally; Rebuilt libraries become new formations bearing memory rather than restorations — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive: The Complete…, 1402 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Preservation requires removing something from its immediate existence
#complicates(0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1059 - Preserving an ethnographic object requires isolating it from all contact
#complicates(0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 26 - Rebuilt libraries become new formations bearing memory rather than restorations
#corroborates(0.82) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 1402 - Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally
#qualifies(0.80)