The Afterlives of Ethnological Artefacts (?): Narratives of the Past and the Restitution of Cultural Assets from French Museums

It is an increasingly more present situation that museums are faced with restitution requests and claims for certain cultural assets. Dealing with such requests and with competing “rights talk” (Sally Engle Merry, 2003) raises not only a series of historical, moral, and political interrogations, but also the need for coordinating very heterogeneous and incoherent legislative frameworks. Moreover, these peculiar restitution cases and the regulation of property rights over cultural assets become complex processes in which different actors, norms and types of legitimacy are brought together and confronted with one another.  

Starting mainly from several restitution claims concerning human remains, which have been addressed to Quai Branly Museum in Paris, to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (the Muséum) in Paris, and to the Royal Museum for Central Africa, in Tervuren (Belgium), this paper will look into the actors of the process of (re)construction of museums’ norms and policies. Moreover, the project will analyse the process of norms’ “framing” (Rodger Payne, 2001) : how these actors engage with the “great meta-narratives” of the past? And what are the main themes employed in justifying the “necessity of restitution”, particularly the political-historical arguments? (restitution as synonymous with the recognition of former colonies’ sovereignty, or with a reparation for colonial past’s torts).