Interview with PD Dr. Hans-Konrad Schmutz

The Natur Museum in Winterthur holds a little collection of ethno-anthropologic objects, grown during the 18th and 19th centuries. The opportunity to refresh the exhibition probably entailed questions about the best way to put this material on display. Choosing traditional showcases was probably considered a bad idea, not only because boring, but also because ambiguous in front of a coarse and still solid grand narrative, which was born, as the disciplines themselves and their collecting, in a colonialist Europe. So, how to move in the direction of a cultural anthropology? How to lead a potential visitor – maybe still receptive to the distinction between European culture, regarded as “superior”, and the exotic ones – out of centuries-old seductive grand narratives? On the other way, the mission of the museum was not to underline a break in anthropological studies, nor to teach any supposed absolute “right way” to think about relationships between cultures. The collection itself was reflecting a precise historical relationship between European and non-European cultures. It was born contextually to the questionable grand narrative, and mainly thanks to donations from rich local merchants. So, curators had to confront a heavy dilemma. If representing a grand narrative could have been historically legitimate, either the dimensions of the collection and the expectations of the public made this choice impassable. Actually, there was no way to represent different moments in the history of anthropology.
Finally, the curators found out an amazing solution, which I feel very fitting with the general purposes of our seminar: objects are on display as in the hold of a ship, the vitrines transformed in trunks. This solution is exciting for children and adults. The ship moves as in an ocean, and plays with out-of-time intimate senses of discovery and voyage. But what is incredibly effective is that, by representing objects in their way to become scientific objects, it lets the doors open about their interpretation once the ship is supposed to dock. If we imagine these objects to reach some place today, then we could think of them as objects dealing with cultural anthropology. But if we imagine these objects to reach Europe before the 20th century (as in fact many of them did) then we should decide to look at them as objects dealing not only with anthropology, but with its history. Displayed in their transition from simple things to objects of scientific enquiry, these items at once reveal historicity in interpretation.
If historicity is saved, a witty stratagem is supposed to remedy grand narrative temptations. In a box facing the entrance, some Swiss souvenirs are displayed. After historical relativity, the geographical relativity of knowledge becomes a juicy topic to think about.