Cultural Memory, Migrating Modernities and Museum Practices

The intention of the contributions in this volume is to explore the parameters and paradigms of the contemporary museum—its spaces, practices and avowed purposes—in the light of the critical interrogations raised by postcolonial criticism and analyses. How are we to re-think museum studies, exhibitionary practices and archiving procedures within the radical revaluation of Occidental modernity? Such an investigation witnesses the latter’s historical and cultural premises being exposed to questions and possibilities it has rarely authorized. When the unsung bodies, cultures and histories of colonialism and Empire return to ghost the contemporary world—this, too, is “globalization”—then the manner of picturing and framing the memories of that past and present becomes a pressing and contested matter. Are we merely to adjust and enlarge an inherited frame of understanding to incorporate this critical encounter, or is something more required? With contributions by: a.titolo, Danilo Capasso, Iain Chambers, Lidia Curti, Alessandra De Angelis, Beatrice Ferrara, Giulia Grechi, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona, Michaela Quadraro, and Federica Timeto.