Restitution and rehumanisation

Abstract

This article makes an argument for rehumanisation as a methodology of restitution, one whose meanings have significant potential, especially in understanding restitution as distinct from repatriation and Rückgabe. While repatriation and Rückgabe refer to projects of giving back, restitution signals an anticolonial politics of reclamation, restoration and return. The work of restitution belongs to a politics of anti-colonial claims-making, while repatriation and Rückgabe seek to conduct returns on the terms of the returners. Restitution should also proceed alongside a critique of European museum classificatory systems, and histories of collecting that turned belongings in to ethnologised objects and that objectified the bodies of ancestors as ‘human remains’, using a category of museum objectification. It argues that restitution should be understood as a politics of disciplinary critique as well as a new practice of museology. This article examines the work of claimants, activists and museum professionals in advancing the work of restitution.