Dendur and Deleuze: The Becoming-Icon of American Egyptology at the Met

Abstract

This article charts the author’s “epistemological disobedience” in using postcolonial “theory as liberatory practice” to envision Egyptologies not bound to colonial pillars of modern Western science, thought, and society. The author finds that Deleuzian postcolonialism supports the temple of Dendur housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art outside the confines of Egyptology through investigating the possibilities of key Deleuzian concepts of rhizome, multiplicity, assemblage, and the process of “becoming-.” Here, Dendur is simultaneously an ancient temple, modern museum object, and a contemporary site for public protest. Ultimately, this vagueness affords an unbounding for Egyptology as a discipline.