"A complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition" -Publishers Weekly "An impressive
critique of the universal museum as complicit in the damages inflicted by colonial power"
-Isaac Julien artist and filmmaker "Should fascinate anyone interested in social justice
post-colonialism a nd the arts" -Euronews "Powerful and so relevant" -Diacritik The
Western museum is a battleground-a terrain of ideological political and economic contestation.
Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum but how many have the audacity to question
the idea of the universal museum itself? In A Programme of Absolute Disorder Françoise
Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history she uncovers the context
in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism and of Europe's
self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage. Vergès outlines a radical
horizon: to truly decolonize the museum is to implement a "programme of absolute disorder"
inventing other ways of apprehending the human and non-human world that nourish collective
creativity and bring justice and dignity to the dispossessed. Françoise Vergès is a
political scientist activist historian film writer and public educator. She is the author
of A Decolonial Feminism and A Feminist History of Violence . She is also a senior research
fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation University
College London.
