NATIONAL MUSEUMS, DECOLONIAL HERITAGE PRACTICES AND PERSISTENT EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE IN THE PHILIPPINES AND BRAZIL

the (non-)place of sexual and gender diversity

Abstract

National museums are produced by national ideologies while simultaneously contributing to the reproduction of national narratives. They can be thought of as a biopolitical governmentality dispositive, thus representing tensions related to maintaining bodypolitics, biopolitics and geopolitics within and beyond national realms. They rarely address the sexual and gender diversity of their respective countries in their exhibitions. This paper aims to present the results of a reflection on the violence exerted by such museums in erasing sexual and gender diversity from their narratives and, consequently, reproducing a certain form of homolesbotransphobia. Building upon the contested nature of the idea of nationhood, decolonial interventions carried out in national museums will be discussed, which have been attempting to problematize these issues through the diversification of their exhibitions, as seen in the National Historical Museum in Brazil and the National Museum of Anthropology in the Philippines.