Neither alive nor death: a hauntological study about (dormant) collections, museums and the urgency of uncanny curation

The paper addresses the relationship between national museums and their collections from a theoretical perspective. It departs from the observation that the vast majority of collections worldwide lie dormant, as existing in a state of superposition of being both alive and death. By dormant, I refer to objects of all kinds that have been collected and preserved but are never – or no longer – the subject of attention; They are neither displayed, loaned, researched, viewed, nor restored. The implications of this condition are explored through a series of case-studies involving museums with divergent profiles, including science museums, world heritage museums and fine arts museums. In this manner, it dismantles the notion of the museum as a home for heritage, affirms its inherent uncanny nature, and repositions it as a haunted space, inhabited by spectres1spectresspectres. Theoretically, it is grounded in Derrida’s hauntology as articulated in Specters of Marx. The aim of this study is threefold: to address specific institutional practices and paradoxes; to search for new terminologies through which to think and speak about museums and collections; and to propose a shift towards uncanny curation.