Affect and art: encounters with objects of power in South African museum and archival collections
| dc.contributor.advisor | Grunebaum, Heidi | |
| dc.contributor.author | Stone, Kristy | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-04-10T13:55:30Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-04-10T13:55:30Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This doctoral thesis investigates the ontological foundations of museum praxis by examining four objects of power located in Western Cape Museum archives in South Africa. These objects – a Tsimshian soul catcher, a bushman hunting bag, Entada rheedii sea beans and an azimat (Islamic written amulet) – all classified under the label of "charms," an invented category that groups everything that is not “rational”, Western and Christian together. In museums “charms” are continuously derided as the antithesis of modernism and the embodiment of paganism, animism or as traditional and taken as symbols of “pre-contact societies”. The term "charm" also encompasses objects connected to diverse healing paradigms, intimately tied to ideas of sickness, the body and spirituality. Consequently, these artefacts hold profound personal and social significance to the communities from whence they originated, prompting a deep enquiry about the histories of oppression that resulted in their collection, and whether they should continue to remain in museums and archives. These objects, in other words, challenge traditional museum categories and narratives, asking uncomfortable questions of the institutions that store them and those who study them. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10566/20335 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Universty of the Western Cape | |
| dc.subject | Entada rheedii sea beans | |
| dc.subject | South Africa | |
| dc.subject | Western Cape museum | |
| dc.subject | Tsimshian | |
| dc.subject | French Museum | |
| dc.title | Affect and art: encounters with objects of power in South African museum and archival collections | |
| dc.type | Thesis |