Programme of Absolute Disorder

A complete overhaul of the Western museum traditionPublishers WeeklyAn impressive critique of the universal museum as complicit in the damages inflicted by colonial powerIsaac Julien, artist and filmmakerShould fascinate anyone interested in social justice, post-colonialism and the artsEuronewsPowerful and so relevantDiacritikThe Western museum is a battlegrounda terrain of ideological, political and economic contestation. Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum, but how many have the audacity to question the idea of the universal museum itself?In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Franoise Vergs puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvres history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europes self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage.Vergs outlines a radical horizon: to truly decolonize the museum is to implement a programme of absolute disorder, inventing other ways of apprehending the human and non-human world that nourish collective creativity and bring justice and dignity to the dispossessed.Franoise Vergs is a political scientist, activist, historian, film writer, and public educator. She is the author of A Decolonial Feminism and A Feminist History of Violence. She is also a senior research fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, University College London.