Dr. J. Kelechi Ugwuanyi, our postdoctoral research fellow, is speaking at the Envisioning Decolonial Futures through Archaeology conference collaboratively organised by the Department of Archaeology and McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge on 22-26 October 2024. He will speak on “Decolonising decolonisation: moving from discourse to practice, and to pluriversal dialogue in managing African heritage”, as part of Roundtable 4: Heritage as Decolonisation.
In this presentation, Dr. Ugwuanyi argues that decolonisation is becoming a buzzword and rhetoric, especially in handling the wealth of African cultural heritage trapped in the current global geocultural and social identity politics. He interrogates the wave of restitution movements, which implies that the practical project of decolonisation is underway. He tries to justify that even at the centre of the restitution negotiations and return processes, the colonial matrix of power surfaces in the way we think about the crime committed in the looting/taking, in the histories of origin of the materials and in our interpretations and understanding of the objects’ meaning, use and valuation. He draws from his recent publication on coloniality and decoloniality to reflect on the surviving vestiges of colonialism in Nigerian/African heritage and heritage institutions and to engage in how decolonisation can be achieved through a pluriversal dialogue – recognising multiple universalities and the existence of several other realities and possibilities.