Missionary Collections: A Materialized Dimension of Encounters in Contact Zones

Renata TAŃCZUK

Zakład Badań Praktyk Kulturowych, Instytut Kulturoznawstwa, Wydział Nauk Historycznych i Pedagogicznych, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, ul. Szewska 50/51, 50-139 Wrocław, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Missionary collections and museums, both contemporary and historical, represent a major challenge to a scholar interested in collecting practices and in museums. The hybrid character and mission of the latter, the variable ontology of objects assembled in them, their entanglement in the colonial past and in politics, their connections with anthropological and missiological discourse, as well as with different ideas concerning strangers, should be thoroughly investigated, both theoretically and idiographically. The article presents a proposal to interpret missionary collections and museums as material transcript of encounters in ‘contact zones’ (the concept introduced by Mary L. Pratt) and suggests using certain categories useful in the study of missionary collections and museums, such as ‘materialized contact zones,’ ‘gifts,’ ‘souvenirs,’ ‘commodities,’ ‘loot,’ ‘renamed things,’ and ‘things as components of the missionary narrative of anti-conquest,’ including ‘trophies.’ The author identifies the basic problems related to such an interpretation of missionary collections and formulates questions relevant to adopting the proposed perspective in further studies.

Keywords:

missionary collections, missionary museums, contact zone, transculturation, missionary narrative of anti-conquest, materialized contact zones