RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Erato on Monday 06 October 25 02:19 BST (UK)
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Gosh, my grandfather has been publicly accused of capital 'O' "Othering." Too bad he's not around to defend himself.
"One such object is an Angolan basket that had no spiritual value to its collector, a Reverend Merlin Ennis, who in 1939 donated it to the Peabody Museum. The authors infer that the basket was important to this Christian missionary only through identification with a named tribe, the Chokwe, and with the Benguela Highlands whence it came. By contrast, to the Chokwe people, the fifty-four items inside the basket were a means to perceive the past and future. In the hands of their diviner, the basket became a gateway to the unknown.77 By failing to record the identity of this individual, Ennis arranged the forgetting of the power that it had held. The basket therefore represents the Othering of its original owner by Ennis, as is clear from what little documentation of it survives in the Museum’s records."
DOCTORAL THESIS, Colonial Objects in Northern Ireland, Author Widdis, Briony
https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/78969810/2020WiddisBMRPhD.pdf
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Other times, other customs. (othering?!) I expect the Revd Mr Ennis was doing his best in the Benguela Highlands.
I have just helped a museum identify the donor of some items from Northern India, (widow of a soldier of the Raj.) Did I do wrong?