Closures and Museums. Is a Non-Alterity Anthropology Possible?

Museum displays are never innocent ones. They are always revealing and hiding at the same time, always instituting an alterity between Self and Other, between the knowing subject and the known object. Anthropological museums have acquired a bad name in social and cultural anthropology alike for quite different reasons. The crumbling of the evolutionist theoretical background and the perceived inadequacy of survivalist anthropology were important factors in starting one of the first “representational crises” of modern anthropology. We do not intend to engage in a comprehensive investigation, nor to give a concrete museographic receipe in this sense. Our goal is restricted to the discussion of the conditions of the possibility of a neo-Boasian anthropology, as a possible interlocutor for a renewed museum anthropology.