Community museums and rethinking the colonial frame of national museums in Zimbabwe

Abstract

In this paper, we present the Marange Community Museum as an empirical example of how decoloniality can be approached within the museum practice. We argue that the Marange community made use of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies in establishing their museum where rituals and cultural objects are connected in use and in an ongoing dialogue. Ritual processes associated with burials of chiefs and rain petitioning ceremonies are discussed in this paper as inseparable from the physical fabric of cultural objects on display in the Marange Community Museum. We also posit that the way in which this museum was formed is an empirical illustration of how the museum practice can be decolonised because it embraces collaborations with community members. Hence, a decolonial perspective represented by a community museum acknowledges that objects are not mundane but rather represent the coming together of a multiplicity of factors and it also questions the binary division between tangible and intangible heritage knowledge production.

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