{"id":7043576,"date":"2026-08-22T05:57:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T05:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/decolonial-washing-musings-on-decolonisation-as-a-postcolonial-student-anthropolitan\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T05:57:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T05:57:34","slug":"decolonial-washing-musings-on-decolonisation-as-a-postcolonial-student-anthropolitan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7043576","title":{"rendered":"Decolonial-washing?\u00a0Musings on Decolonisation as a Postcolonial Student\u00a0 \u2013 Anthropolitan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Hayley Soh<\/strong> BSc Anthropology with Year Abroad\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n
When I visited the British Museum, I\u00a0happened to chance upon a display of Javanese puppets and models tucked away in one of its many galleries.\u00a0Had I not read the label carefully, I\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0have thought that the puppets were Javanese. Instead, the label focuses on British colonial officer Sir Stamford Raffles, his exploits in the Dutch East Indies and how he \u2018established\u2019 Singapore as a British port.\u00a0As a Singaporean, this\u00a0made me think: if our museums and textbooks are still centred on colonial exploits, where do we even begin to talk about \u2018decolonising\u2019 anthropology?\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\nJavanese puppets in the British Museum<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\u2026..and their corresponding caption, photo by author<\/em>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Deeply entangled in colonialism, many early collections were often only made possible through imperial networks of expansion and extraction,\u00a0as well as\u00a0scientific explorations during the Age of Enlightenment. These collections were stored and displayed in\u00a0wunderkammern<\/em>, or cabinets of curiosities, curated personally by the explorer\/owner and not open to the public. The issue with these predecessors of modern-day museums was that the way they were curated was a direct reflection of the curator\u2019s personal worldview, often impartial and holding significant racial prejudices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This system of arbitrary classification\u00a0along the lines of\u00a0\u2018racial hierarchy\u2019 was inherited by early museums. For example, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford was originally arranged to show the development of material culture from simple to complex, suggesting which items were civilised and which were not. This imposes binary divisions on humanity, categorising people like exhibits in the spirit of unilinear evolution, where racist beliefs are physically materialised in the form of cabinets of curiosities, institutionalising and reinforcing certain worldviews as factual and credible knowledge. This is\u00a0exacerbated\u00a0by the private nature of the collections, only accessible\u00a0to an elite few, reinforcing the divide between the cultured rich and the uncultured poor. Cabinets of curiosities\u00a0exoticise\u00a0the Other, treating non-Western cultures as objects to\u00a0be\u00a0collected\u00a0instead of genuine realities to be understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The contemporary museum\u00a0has responded to the call to \u2018decolonise the museum\u2019 by decentring colonial narratives and democratising access to knowledge. For example, the Auckland War Memorial Museum displays rocks in two ways: one categorised in the scientific way and one in the\u00a0Maori\u00a0way (based on their relationship to the gods and their role in local customs and stories), presenting them as different but equally valid ways of interpretation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The issue of coloniality is not limited to the space of the museum. In my home country Singapore, I see the colonial legacy bleed into aspects of daily life. Our educational system\u00a0largely centres\u00a0our history on the period of British colonisation, on Raffles\u2019 establishment of Singapore as a British port, overlooking our rich history as a trading port in the Malaysian archipelago prior to colonisation. Secondary school history and social studies classes discuss that part of our history sparingly, and it is simply not mentioned once you reach the pre-tertiary level.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sang Nila Utama, the 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century Palembang prince who founded Singapore, is described as a mythical\u00a0folklorish\u00a0figure, leading many Singaporeans to regard him as a book character instead of a real part of our history. By promoting the narrative that Singapore was established by Sir Stamford Raffles\u00a0and\u00a0legitimising his legacy as the reason for our port city\u2019s\u00a0flourishing through the naming of various roads and siting multiple statues of him around the country, Singapore ties its history to a colonial national narrative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, focusing on \u2018decolonising the curriculum\u2019 can also lead to several problems.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Firstly, in trying to correct the Eurocentric perspective in museums and higher education, the decolonised curriculum may oversimplify non-Western scholars\u2019 perspectives. For example, in\u00a0Extractive Relations<\/em>, Evan Killick (2020) argues against the assumption that indigenous communities should always live lightly on the land. The concept of\u00a0buen\u00a0vivir<\/em>, meaning \u2018to live well\u2019,\u00a0is typically taken to mean living in\u00a0harmony with nature over the pursuit of material gain. However, this\u00a0associates\u00a0entire indigenous communities with a specific idea of communality and sociality, glossing over the complex needs and desires of indigenous peoples, which may differ from the common\u00a0perception\u00a0of\u00a0buen\u00a0vivir<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indeed, in Killick\u2019s ethnographic piece, the\u00a0Ashaninka\u00a0people do express material desires and question why their being indigenous comes with the assumption that they should not\u00a0have them. The issue of the homogenisation of indigenous identities creates a binary distinction between the indigenous and non-indigenous lived experiences, reinforcing the\u00a0exoticising\u00a0and Othering of non-Western perspectives. To develop a more nuanced view of\u00a0different cultures, perspectivism emphasises that knowledge is always an interpretive act.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Secondly, there is a fear of co\u2013opting \u2018decolonisation\u2019 to mask the lack of meaningful engagement. When institutions hop on the decolonisation bandwagon, making small but visible changes like emphasising EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) on official websites or removing statues of colonisers, they publicly brand themselves as decolonised while still being embedded in colonial power structures without enacting real change that uplifts marginalised communities: a form of \u2018decolonial\u2013\u00a0washing\u2019\u00a0that bears\u00a0similarities\u00a0to \u2018greenwashing\u2019.\u00a0Furthermore, there is also the concern of institutions absorbing radical thought and\u00a0subsequently\u00a0neutralising it such that it is no longer able to challenge institutional power.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Using the concept of a museum as a \u2018contact zone\u2019 (Clifford 1997), where it cannot be taken as a neutral space and must be acknowledged as a space of colonial encounters, where complex legacies of colonial power interact in front of an audience of millions, therein lies the question of how to move forward. Erasure of colonial legacies from museums is entirely out of the\u00a0question, because\u00a0these atrocities are undeniably part of peoples\u2019 histories and should be acknowledged as such.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, Japan\u2019s postwar cultural rebranding and ongoing disputes over historical apologies (think of the South Korean comfort women who\u00a0have been fighting for an apology for decades) raise the question of what it means to receive \u2018justice\u2019 from those who perpetrated these\u00a0acts of violence. In Singapore, while some of the older generation still refuse to\u00a0have anything to do with Japan following the\u00a0Sook Ching massacre5<\/sup>, the younger generation avidly consumes Japanese culture, revealing a seeming disjunction in the collective memory of our colonial past and how we want our futures to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To Singlish or not to Singlish?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another way colonial baggage seeps into the national consciousness is through the\u00a0perception\u00a0of speech and accents. Singlish is the national dialect in Singapore, but it is\u00a0largely associated\u00a0with the lower class because of the government\u2019s post-independence efforts to implement a \u2018universal language\u2019 amongst an ethnolinguistically diverse population. This can be understood through Bourdieu\u2019s (1984) concept of symbolic violence, which suggests that even after colonial rule, the dominant social group continues to impose its norms on the minority. By reinforcing the\u00a0perception\u00a0of Singlish as too colloquial, its linguistic cultural capital diminishes, echoing colonial hierarchies of linguistic prestige. Yet while excessive Singlish is frowned upon, there is still a stigma against going too far the other end and developing an accent that is \u2018too posh\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before flying abroad, I was copiously warned not to return with a British\u00a0accent, and\u00a0was sent loads of TikToks making fun of students who go to Europe for a semester and return\u00a0with one. Dialects and accents are aural markers of social class, such that once you speak, the person\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0speaking to\u00a0almost automatically\u00a0positions you within the social hierarchy. So, when the international student flies abroad and returns with an\u00a0accent (not codeswitching back to the local dialect), it can be said that they are shunning their \u2018Singaporeanness\u2019\u00a0\u2013\u00a0something we are paradoxically taught to associate with inferiority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These tensions between history and memory bring me back to the Javanese puppets.\u00a0I wonder whether rewriting the label to focus more on their cultural significance and removing any mention of Raffles would help. At the end of the day, these puppets are still thousands of kilometres away from their home, stuck in a glass case,\u00a0having their significance perpetually tied to the coloniser who took a fancy to them one day.\u00a0I guess the broader question\u00a0is, is it\u00a0really possible\u00a0to do anthropology, otherwise?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Footnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n
1<\/sup>\u00a0The Sook Ching massacre refers to the mass killings of Chinese in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation to purge \u2018anti\u2013 Japanese sentiments\u2019 from February to March 1942.\u00a0<\/p>\n
References\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984.\u202fDistinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste<\/em>. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA:\u00a0Harvard University Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clifford, James. 1997. \u201cMuseums as Contact Zones.\u201d In\u202fRoutes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century<\/em>, 188\u2013\u00a0219. Cambridge, MA:\u00a0Harvard University Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Killick, Evan. 2020. \u201cExtractive Relations: Natural Resource Use, Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Protection in Peru.\u201d\u202fBulletin of Latin American Research<\/em>\u202f39 (3): 290\u2013\u00a0304.<\/p>\n
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