{"id":5653,"date":"2019-12-24T13:14:31","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T13:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=5653"},"modified":"2020-02-26T14:57:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T14:57:04","slug":"laura-gustafsson-terike-haapoja-eds-a-museum-of-nonhumanity-goleta-ca-punctum-books-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/volume-15-no-1-2020\/book-review-volume-15-no-1-2020\/laura-gustafsson-terike-haapoja-eds-a-museum-of-nonhumanity-goleta-ca-punctum-books-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Gustafsson & Terike Haapoja (eds.), A Museum of Nonhumanity (Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Launched in Finland and touring Norway and Italy (and Taiwan), the book hereby reviewed documents a significant artistic project exploring the many facets of dehumanisation and inhumanity, which the participants wish to consign to \u201chistory\u201d in lieu<\/em> of \u201ca new, more inclusive era\u201d, as the introduction spells out for the reader (5).<\/p>\n

Emblematically, the introduction is followed by the text of the speech delivered by C\u00e9cile Kashetu Kyenge, Italian member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, at the inauguration of the \u201cMuseum of Nonhumanity\u201d\u2014in truth a complex video-installation or multi-media exhibition\u2014at the Festival of Santarcangelo di Romagna on 22nd<\/sup> February 2016. A Modenese black woman of Congolese origin, Kyenge has been the target of much misogynistic and racist rhetoric from Italy\u2019s right-wing parties and their supporters, who have been continuing ipso facto <\/em>some of the forms of dehumanisation addressed in the \u201cmuseum\u201d and, a fortiori<\/em>, in this book.<\/p>\n

Other forms are mentioned in the ensuing text, i.e. the speech delivered by the Finnish parliamentarian Silvia Modig, who recalls \u201cchild labour\u201d, \u201cthe defenceless and the disadvantaged\u201d and sentient or intelligent \u201canimals\u201d themselves as the victims of inhumane behaviours in contemporary societies, where the \u201ctendency to categorize\u201d them into \u201ctwo camps: \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019\u201d is far from absent, and the reduction or removal of any bond of \u201cempathy\u201d made possible (9). The deeper ground of this process of dehumanisation and inhumanity in contemporary world nations is also touched upon, as the speaker refers to the \u201ceconomic game\u201d ruling over all lives, whether human or non-human, such that \u201cour rights and opportunities are defined\u201d on the basis of \u201cour value to the economy, much in the same way as livestock are treated as mere numbers\u201d with \u201ca price tag that determines how well they are looked after.\u201d (10)<\/p>\n

The volume continues with a series of high-quality photographs showing the installation from a variety of different angles, as well as a detailed catalogue of the printed, artistic and other sources utilised therein (\u201cThe Archive of Nonhumanity\u201d, 56-247). This thorough catalogue is sub-divided into twelve conceptual categories that thematise and\/or problematise debated forms of non-humanity, i.e. \u201cperson\u201d (primarily on the long-lived practice of slavery, i.e. ownership in people, contrasted with the \u201cpersona ficta<\/em>\u201d of the corporation; 72), \u201cpotentia\u201d (in nuce<\/em>, on the contested ontological status of the embryo qua <\/em>person or non-person), \u201cmonster\u201d (essentially on imprisonment and death penalties), \u201cresource\u201d (primarily on the little-remembered murderous sack of colonial Congo by the Belgian Crown), \u201cboundary\u201d (a clever juxtaposition of the management of wolves in Finland and the internment and extermination of the \u201cReds\u201d in the 1918 Finnish civil war), \u201cpurity\u201d (on the transformation of care for the mentally ill in Finland during the early 20th<\/sup> century, from Christian charity to eugenic control and sterilisation), \u201cdisgust\u201d (on the colonial history and civil war of Rwanda and the rhetoric of \u2018vermin\u2019 and \u2018cockroaches\u2019 accompanying the latter), \u201canima\u201d (on select philosophical sources for the sharp qualitative distinction and separation between humans and animals), \u201ctender\u201d (on the many cruelties of meat production and consumption), \u201cdistance\u201d (on the technology and ideology of Nazi extermination camps), \u201canimal\u201d (on the etymology of the word itself), and \u201cdisplay\u201d (on the Belgian Museum of Central Africa).<\/p>\n

Two essays integrate and expand upon the previous and largest section of the book: some \u201ccondensed speculations\u201d by Giovanna Esposito Yussif and \u201cEmpathy is part of our deepest nature\u201d by Salla Tuomivaara. While the former explains how museums can reinforce or challenge existing ideologies, the latter shows how the cruelty of \u201cothering practices\u201d (256) can be countered by the kindness of our natural propensity to empathise with the living. Seemingly apt for an academic event or a scholarly journal, these two essays are very much \u00e0 propos:<\/em> seminars, lectures, public readings and other learned activities have been accompanying the \u201cmuseum of nonhumanity\u201d in its Nordic and Mediterranean (and south-east-Asian) itinerary.<\/p>\n

The programme of the related events, a comprehensive list of references, credits and acknowledgments, as well as the standard colophon conclude the volume. Since the exhibition must have been missed by all who failed to attend it, this book is going to be of potential interest to this very large audience. In particular, however, persons keen on reflecting about penology, animal rights and bioethics, Finnish and colonial history, gender and minority studies, Holocaust studies, or the interplay between art and philosophy, can all find something stimulating in this volume, which is freely available worldwide on the internet as an e-book<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of the book:\u00a0Laura Gustafsson & Terike Haapoja (eds.), A Museum of Nonhumanity (Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2019)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1728],"tags":[1631,1816,1819,1801,1818,1817,1821,1820,401],"coauthors":[990],"class_list":["post-5653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review-volume-15-no-1-2020","tag-abortion","tag-animal-rights","tag-belgium","tag-colonialism","tag-congo","tag-finnish-civil-war","tag-gender-studies","tag-museum-studies","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5655,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions\/5655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}