When the colonial British arrived on the tropical shores of the island which we now call Sri Lanka, they did not colonise a place inhabited only by human beings. The British Empire included both human and non-human animal subjects. Colonial extraction also led to the widespread, often violent, movement of non-human animals and parts of animal bodies to European metropoles, some of which are now in European museum cabinets. However, existing post/decolonial archival and theoretical work has paid very little attention to these “beasts” that reside in the archive and museum. In this paper, I provide an overview of the ways in which I encountered animality during my visits to British archives and museums, including the Pitt Rivers Museum. Drawing on this material, I ask: What does it mean to foreground animality within post/decolonial archival and ethnographic work? What does such a foregrounding do to post/decolonial theories and methodologies?
I argue that foregrounding animality can not only challenge the anthropocentric delusions we humans have about some kind of exceptionalism and superiority over various forms of life with whom we share this planet, but also the methodological nationalisms that pervade the theories and methodologies that have been devised to analyse and theorise our world. Crucial amongst these is the way in which, driven by a desire to see the world as a site of rules and order, vastly complex codes such as “society” and “culture” are restricted within the narrow confines of nation-state borders that many animals often defy — think of a sea creature that crosses Sri Lanka’s continental shelf and enters that of the Maldives, or a butterfly who flies across Palk Strait from South India to northern Sri Lanka. Scholars critical of methodological nationalism have long demonstrated the ways that complex and connected histories and heritages get reduced through a fixation on nation-states and nation-state borders, many of which are themselves colonial artefacts. Is it possible to engage in critical analysis that foregrounds interconnectedness and complexity rather than reifying these violent borders? What can we learn from the beasts in the museum in this regard?
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Michaelmas Term 2025
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)
In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close).
Convened by Paul Basu and Elizabeth Hallam.
