{"title":"Colonialism and Enslavement in a Bottle: Guiding People through an Exhibition in the German Historical Museum","authors":"P. Helber","doi":"10.1353/ncu.2022.0013","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the exhibition entitled \"Europe and the Sea\" at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, visitors were confronted with a modern bottle of Johannsen-brand rum that served to illuminate the transatlantic \"slave trade\" and the enslavement of Africans. The bottle, with an old map of the Caribbean on its label, was presented as a hands-on object. My contribution focuses on discussions between visitors and tour guides on the past and present effects of colonialism. All these conversations were triggered by the bottle, which created a post-colonial narrative between the other historical objects in that part of the exhibition and the everyday life of the visitors themselves.","PeriodicalId":40483,"journal":{"name":"Narrative Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"339 - 356"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Narrative Culture","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ncu.2022.0013","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:In the exhibition entitled "Europe and the Sea" at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, visitors were confronted with a modern bottle of Johannsen-brand rum that served to illuminate the transatlantic "slave trade" and the enslavement of Africans. The bottle, with an old map of the Caribbean on its label, was presented as a hands-on object. My contribution focuses on discussions between visitors and tour guides on the past and present effects of colonialism. All these conversations were triggered by the bottle, which created a post-colonial narrative between the other historical objects in that part of the exhibition and the everyday life of the visitors themselves.
期刊介绍:
Narrative Culture is a new journal that conceptualizes narration as a broad and pervasive human practice, warranting a holistic perspective that grasps the place of narrative comparatively across time and space. The journal invites contributions that document, discuss and theorize narrative culture, and offers a platform that integrates approaches spread across various disciplines. The field of narrative culture thus outlined is defined by a large variety of forms of popular narratives, including not only oral and written texts, but also narratives in images, three-dimensional art, customs, rituals, drama, dance, music, and so forth. Narrative Culture is peer-reviewed and international as well as interdisciplinary in orientation.