Transpositional geologies: presencing the politics of mineral specimens

Book section : Chapter

As an introduction to Transpositional Geologies, this essay considers what histories and knowledges are explicitly or implicitly ‘presenced’ by mineral specimens encountered in geology museums. It explores how disciplines and disciplinary museum institutions understand specimens differently. The geological museum’s continued presentation of specimens as natural, scientific objects, devoid of politics, is contrasted with the increasing politicisation of cultural objects in the ethnographic museum. The essay argues that both disciplines are implicated in histories of colonial violence and extractivism, and that insights gained within anthropology as it has sought to acknowledge and address its colonial entanglements could be productively applied in geology. Museum objects, whether geological or anthropological, are conceptualised as fragments, which stand as metonyms for absent contexts. The essay discusses how these absences are presenced explicitly through museum interpretation, but also more elliptically through other strategies, including the various ‘transpositional’ interventions documented and enacted in the book.

Authors: Basu, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Kerber Verlag
• Host title: Transpositional Geologies: Spectres of Coloniality
• Place of publication: Bielefeld
• Publication date: 2025-05-23
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 9783735609717
• Language: English
• Keywords: metonymy; Broken Hill / Kabwe; museums; presence; Nature-Culture; material culture; extractivism; epistemic objects; mineral specimens; political geology
• Subtype: Chapter