Desires of decoloniality and museal logics : encounters between the swedish museum of ethnography, democratic ideals, and contemporary audiences

Sammanfattning: ‘Decolonisation’ is a frequently used expression in museum contexts, and a growing museal practice. In ethnographic museums, such attempts are usually performed in the shape of projects that seek to establish new relationships with source – or diasporan communities. However, little research has been produced about how these practices relate to the political demands and expectations set on state museums, and how they are shaped in a Swedish context. By following the project On going Africaat the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, Sweden, the thesis aims to explore how different museal logics condition activities, are reproduced, and relate to each other. The empirical data consists of interviews with museum staff and collaborators engaged in the project, observations of project activities, and written data such as policy documents and government publications.The findings show that tension and ambivalence characterise museal decoloniality. Along with ideals of social inclusion, co-creation and decolonial agendas, the museal economy is being eroded and activities market-adjusted, at the same time as the museum is also expected to be educative and authoritarian. While museum professionals struggle with creating relevance for the museum and the collections, the latter has been discursively fragmented through contemporary investments in heritage justice and repatriation discourse. To external stake holders, the ethnographic collection symbolises on going forms of colonial violence and heritage items that contribute to diasporan identity formation. Furthermore, the public museum is today a place where contemporary anti-racist ideology manifest itself through silences performed in relation to racialisation, and knowledge is at the museum a contingent and relational practice.