Aura, Institution, and the Colonial Object: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Reproduction and the Repatriation Debate

In 1897, British soldiers looted thousands of culturally significant artworks from the royal palace of the Benin Kingdom in present-day Nigeria. Bronze plaques, ivory carvings, and wooden objects created by royal Edo guilds for ritual and spiritual purposes were scattered across European and American museum collections, where many remain today. The debate over whether these objects should be returned has largely been framed as a question of legal ownership. This investigation posits that the real question is not who owns these objects, but what they mean. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's theory of artistic "aura," alongside postcolonial scholarship and critical museum studies, this research contends that colonial museums sever cultural objects from the living traditions that gave them meaning. Yet repatriation alone cannot restore what colonialism destroyed. What is ultimately at stake is the relationship between an object and the tradition that produced it, and whether that relationship can be reconstituted.