The Biography of Objects: in and from Exile, Or why Exile is not Migration
Tuesday 4 April
The next seminar of the University of Malta’s WIPSS, in its 20th anniversary year, will be on Tuesday 4 April at 18:00 in Engineering Lecture Theatre (ELT), and will be given by Dr Alexandra Galitzine Loumpet.
Dr Latitzine Loumpet writes:
‘In his Museum of Innocence (2008), Orhan Pamuk challenged Marcel Proust when writing about objects in museums: “If you listen to them carefully you can hear them cry”. Objects can be in exile in homes and public spaces (such as museums) – experiencing a second, or third 'life'. But they are also of exile, embodying experiences of displacement through spaces, temporal periods and even generations.
This talk seeks to define what could be objects in/of exile. I will make a distinction between the notion of exile and the notion of migration, as the temporalities of one’s condition can be separated from that of one’s consciousness. This paradigmatic decentring aims to renew gazes and interpretations of what we call “objects of migration”: their biography and fate, and their relation to subjects in exile.
In other words, I will seek to answer the question: are objects of exile necessarily objects in migration?’
Alexandra Galitzine Loumpet is an anthropologist at University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focuses on the processes of making heritage, and the representations of alterity in the Bamoun Kingdom in Cameroon. Since 2011 she has been working on the notions of Exile and Migration, looking in particular at objects and experiences. She coordinates the research program « Non-Lieux de l’Exil » in Paris.
Tuesday 4 April, 18:00-19:00, Engineering Lecture Theatre (ELT), followed by discussion. The public is cordially invited.
Convenors: Paul Clough, Peter Mayo, and Michael Briguglio