Of L MH 2 and Their Breathing Bones:

If you examine closely, below the timeworn fabric that enshrouds ‘L MH 2’, among the several tears that marks the linen as it drapes over their left foot, you can see, perhaps, what could be read as ‘bones.’ This juncture where the fraying fabric meets the wheatish remains – where the concealed becomes seen – blurs the distinctions between in/animacy. I first visited L MH 2 in the April of 2023. Akin to any student who grew up on archaeological discourses of early 21st century, I was caught, in the first instance, by the ‘splendour’ of the mummified remains. However, over subsequent visits, the exposed bones opened up to embodiments beyond seeing. What does it mean to ‘see’ or possibly, to ‘feel’ something in such a revelatory way – to experience the emotive presences of L MH 2, or more colloquially, the mummified remains at the Archäologisches Museum of Münster University?

Within specific frameworks concerning the nature of perception, the initial response is often tied to experiencing, merely, the physical presence of these remains. However, my encounters with L MH 2 extended beyond this. It encompassed the experience of an additional presence – one that simultaneously existed within the remains, and yet lingered beyond. It was thus that I visited L MH 2; not solely since they ‘signified’ something, but rather to feel something – I wanted to be in the ‘living’ presence of the individual who inhabit/ed these bones; to discourse, learn and share with them. L MH 2’s remains do, indeed, speak to us. They speak not only of object biographies and complexities of preservation, but also of post/colonial displacements and enduring violences. In the following, I contend with my sensuous engagements with L MH 2 as equal post/colonial subjects. Throughout, I raise several questions, resisting answers and inviting responses. My guiding inquiries are the processes that facilitate encounters between two ‘non-Europeans’ in Germany, and their emotional and relational implications.

Human remains possess the potential to complicate, elude, and radically challenge the frameworks we generate to make sense of them. Yet, notwithstanding this living porosity of bones, have museum spaces, as Museum Anthropologist Cara Krmpotich and their colleagues suggest, “perpetuated the anthropological gaze and created an object where there should have been a subject” (2010, p. 380)? Despite the humanness of L MH 2, what considerations underpin the exhibition of their remains, not least in the vicinity of other ‘objects’, and what frameworks make palatable the exhibition of some human remains, while marking the visibilisation of others disagreeable? Such a query proceeds from the hyper-visibilisation of L MH 2, evident in the fragmentation of their wholeness into the body, the sarcophagus and amulets. More precisely, the identification of the mummified remains through a set of alpha-numerics and their suspension in a glass case, evoke what the Cameroonian historian and political theorist, Achille Mbembe (2019), term the processes of “becoming-object” (p. 72). This de-subjectification extends beyond the physical removal and relocation of remains from their mourning contexts, including their articulation by individuals who bear no relational genealogies with the deceased. The existence of mummified remains in the museum complex may serve to postpone or even deny the ‘living presence’ of L MH 2, relegating them to the position of an ‘object.’

There is, at play here, a particular post/colonial context. The displacement of mummified remains point to racially prejudiced histories wherein shared territories and exchange of artefacts were neither palatable nor conducive of inter-ethnic/racial solidarities. On the contrary, they signalled mechanisms that divested our relation with the dead. These mechanisms were intricately linked to objectification, since they decentered relationalities – to land, culture, context, language and sociality – that were so integral to the constitution of subjectivity of human remains. Relational divestment continues to deny our ability to realise our relations to human remains, while cyclically subjecting bones to relations that they are not amenable to. My concern here are not the care frameworks fostered by contemporary conservation theory, but rather continuing realities of relational divestment that might maintain object positions.

And yet, my visits to L MH 2 made transparent the deep vitality and agency made manifest in their remains by both our relationalities and their own agency as a once-living individual. Human remains, be they corpses, bones or flesh, make us act, exercising deferred agency either themselves or through the living. Certainly, L MH 2, throughout their history, have made people move – from excavation, erasure, research, and contemplation, to destruction and even repulsion. Still, for some, they have made us mourn; mourn the loss of not only their rest, but also the loss of bodies, objects and art from our own localities. For some of us, L MH 2 is ‘living’ for they are yet another immigrant put into motion by forces that precede/succeed us. Our mutual predicaments, displacement from unbounded heimat(s), and the post/colonial contexts animate our relation. This relational juncture, underscored by displacement, is of deep relevance. Specifically, I posit that individual attachments and emotional connections to museum exhibits are not only rooted in cultural heritage but are also intensified by a shared sense of colonial displacement and racialization.

Displacement, here, signals not solely (forced) migrations, but includes varying trajectories of movement set in motion by ‘hauntings’ of coloniality. Such a reading takes into account the structural frameworks that influence migration of people and objects to specific locales. Pointedly, during imperial regimes, the influence of colonial power was implicated, directly and indirectly, in the removal of a multitude of artifacts from around the colonies, several of which remain in Europe’s urban centres. Consequently, artefacts, akin to people, underwent varied experiences of displacement. Such an interpretation opens the prospect of repositioning objects at the heart of the lives, narratives, and relationships that are intricately intertwined with them. It makes possible to think of ‘displaced people’ in relation to ‘displaced objects.’ This approach, what Sandra Dudley (2021), a Social Anthropologist, regards as ‘displacement anthropology,’ locates the ‘displaced,’ at its focal point, acknowledging that despite being dislocated from their native milieu, they are neither adrift nor without purpose.
I first arrived in Germany on the 11th of November, 2022, dictated by an agency shaped by post/colonial violences; not only the colonisation of India that drained the sub-continent of its wealth and knowledges, but also post-colonial bio-extractive instances like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy that continue to fuel migration from the city. Encountering L MH 2, I bore with me not only my personal experiences, but also the experiences of my community. It was, then, not difficult to recognise parallel narratives of movement and loss as indicated by L MH 2. I, therefore, suggest that our re/encounters may hold further relevance for specific positionalities. In moments of genuine contact, human remains can function relationally, acquiring definition within contexts that are simultaneously social, material, and political. The purpose here is to emphasize what re/encounters make people feel and do, rather than solely what they mean.

To refocus, what emotions and reactions do human remains elicit? I contend that practices and aesthetics that forefront relationalities can help us navigate post/colonial hauntings, fostering solidarities rooted in shared, lived, and ongoing histories of colonial displacement. An aesthetic of relations theoretically grounds itself in the contexts of human interactions, bringing ‘people,’ ‘pasts’ and ‘processes’ to cultivate understandings of how individuals with differing backgrounds of displacement relate to museum exhibits. Particularly, it does so by taking account of re-encounters, both those of discovery and loss, with objects, subjects, places, people and voices. As opposed to conventional frameworks that entail an interaction between an observer and an exhibit, relational aesthetics engenders encounters among individuals. These interactions are generative of collective meanings, transitioning from individual consumption to shared experiences.

The potential of museums to reframe historical injustices is frequently tied to the narratives and relations produced in spaces of exhibition. Taking heed of this, a relational approach can alter museum narratives such that they record not only narrations of loss, but also counter-narratives of imagination, reclamation and reappropriation. My interactions with L MH 2 lead me to pin my hopes on the possibility of relating stories, on a museum space that opens up to processes of cultural and collective truth-telling. A museum that invites students, artists and individuals from communities which experienced colonial loss, along with other visitors to participate in the creation of alternative landscapes of relating through workshops, tours, radical performances, and displays. This necessitates re-conceptualizing exhibition spaces as lively social hubs where research extends beyond closed-doors. This further involves ‘democratising’ knowledges, bolstering a multi-directional flow of information – not only from the post/colonial subject to the museum professional, but also from within institutions to transnational communities. This entails the publication of museum accession registers, research outputs, and relational trajectories. In proposing so, I am neither novel, nor radical. Approaches that centre human remains and post/coloniality, have, for long, been the concerns of German and global museological discourses. Several research outputs by Deutscher Museumsbund, for instance, have signalled a move towards more respectful and historically-conscious methods that are simultaneously practice-oriented. This warrants more than presenting a seemingly neutral life history. Instead, it demands finding a means to narrate past losses that constitute the foundations of contemporary museum practices. The objective is not to undo it in its entirety, but to illuminate the scale of dispossessions.

In this context, museum professionals do not hold a secondary role. Rather, they assume a position of mediation between established practices and counter-narratives. Indeed, L MH 2, as a subject of conservation, functions both as a reservoir of knowledge and as a preparation infused with emotions, crafted through labour rooted in extensive training. Certainly, in proposing a bolstered involvement of the public, I do not suggest for a surrender of museological expertise. Rather, I advocate for a re-evaluation of the underpinnings of such expertise and a decentralization of authority. This is a hopeful perspective that asserts that paying heed to relationalities, when cast in the frameworks of colonial displacements, has the potential to yield fresh insights, methods, and support mechanisms. This involves a keen awareness of the journeys — both metaphorical and literal — that things and people undertake, the thresholds they navigate, the relations they nurse and the diverse displacements that persist.

Over the course of my visits to Archäologisches Museum during the writing of this article, I frequently met fellow students who shared connections and commitments to the artifacts showcased at the museum. In bringing together post/colonial displacements and current museological landscapes, I aim not to propose a reductive dichotomy between the colonizer and the colonized, although the significance of such distinctions endure. Alternately, I call for a framework that respects the unique passions driving our interactions with exhibition spaces. Parts of this comprehension draws from my training in post/colonial Literary and Cultural Studies, and partly from my previous experience as a Research Assistant at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya; given form by my learnings as the Chair of the research group on Critical South Asian Death Studies at the English Seminar. Contending with death, and with the dead body, has been a key concern in our approach. We mark a departure from the concept of contained and composed bodies, advocating instead for an appreciation of the material flows that connect exhibits, people and landscapes. Akin to the methodologies of relationality suggested in this article, our approach is both decolonial and participatory, premised on the desire to learn from counter-narratives. It is in following this motif, that I treat this article as another call to discourse –inviting those reading this article, and particularly those provoked, to attend the First International Conference on Critical South Asian Death Studies (18th-20th April, 2024), as a space for collectively generating knowledges. However, there are nuances to the manners in which we define decolonial knowledge production. When initiatives declare a commitment to be ‘inclusive’ or ‘decolonial,’ it is essential to read these assertions with criticality. Decoloniality is a complex, multi-layered and contested set of concepts requiring dedicated space, time and financial resources; lest it be rendered another buzzword. The concern here is that decolonization might be diminished to a superficial display in Germany’s constitutive narratives, lacking substantive impact, or, even worse, claimed as another triumphant achievement in Germany’s contemporary trajectory.

Human remains carry significance not solely for individuals with cultural connections but parallelly, contingent upon contexts, for those who interact with them. They may be viewed as shared familial materials to be nurtured or as political tools subject to violation and manipulation. The continuous flows of meaning and properties of bones compel us to acknowledge and critically examine the ongoing processes of un/becoming and re/constitution that adhere to the materiality of remains. Human remains are simultaneously cultural, material, historical, and as is the crux of my arguments, relational, inviting inter/actions, alterations, and alternatives. Not an injunction, however, I believe that the agency of bones holds deep potential to address histories of dispossession in spaces of exhibition. For Museums to transcend their role as mere store houses of artefacts and to fulfil their potential as distinct contemporary public arenas, they must necessarily transform into discursive nexuses. The affective materialities of the dead may yet breathe new life into museum spaces. The dead, I suggest, are starkly alive.

| Yash Gupta

References:
Dudley, S. H. (2021). Displaced things in museums and beyond loss, liminality and hopeful encounters. Routledge.
Krmpotich, C., Fontein, J., & Harries, J. (2010). The substance of bones: The emotive materiality and affective presence of human remains. Journal of Material Culture, 15(4), 371–384. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183510382965.
Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press.

Editor's addition: In 2016, L MH 2 was the focus of the exhibition „Tod und Ewigkeit“, which also discussed ethical issues relating to the handling of human remains in museums.The catalog (in German) is available in libraries as well as a PDF on the researchgate.net platform.