Separation Anxiety
I spent the weekend in London. It was my first time there, and I went sightseeing, adding museums to my to-see list willy-nilly.
As a classicist, the British Museum is controversial. The history of theft, colonialism, and imperialism does not escape me.
Stopping in the Egypt exhibit
I stood in the Ancient Egyptian exhibits. The obelisks were exposed to open air, not behind a glass cage like the Greek exhibit. It was tempting to touch the smooth stone, to feel an electric zap of knowing. But how can I ethically engage with artifacts experiencing separation anxiety, far removed from their creators?
I walked through the crowded room, watching the patrons engage. People peered over open sarcophagi, necks contorted unnaturally, begging to fall and be stuck inside forever. I’d be the one shutting the lid on them. I felt dizzy. There used to be a dead person there. And now, living people take selfies in their final resting places.
The dead were treated carefully, deliberately. The processes were attended to by many, and the care of dead bodies was ritualistic and methodical. There was compassion in laying someone to rest. There was intentionality.
Now, their tombs are dug out, their coffins on display, their preserved bodies in another room, separated from the ritual. There was a cruel purpose in taking people out of their graves and away from their lands. The curators perfected this to a science, convincing us that we needed to see flesh torn from bone and strung together, hanging by a thread, and put in a temperature-controlled glass box. The little placard with information about the bodies mocked me.
But I didn’t need a flimsy notecard to tell me about them. I knew who they were. They were my family, by blood or by soul; I was linked to them. What happened to them would happen to me—my story, stolen by science to educate, to amaze, to otherize. I saw my mother’s skull in the glass box, a gaping hole where her wide nose bridge should have been. I saw my brother’s hind, jagged, in 3 pieces. The bones were nailed to the wall, behind glass, sterile. They were not human. It was an exhibit, always teaching, and educating on death and dying. The placards were unconvincing of their humanity. No length of text could convince me that the bones were respectfully shown to me.
There was a dirt pit off to the side of the room. The fluorescents illuminated the shallow grave. It was a staged grave or maybe a recreation. I could not bring myself to look at the human remains left out by whichever curator designed the exhibit. The notecard looked at me. I did not look back.
In which a man learns empathy from doing acid (or tourists seeing dead bodies)
What can I learn from an exhibit that displays human remains this way? Should I learn empathy for other cultures? Compassion for the dead? Is it necessary to disrespect and violate for me to know? Are our collective imaginations not vivid enough to connect with other human beings, not in the same context as us? Were the stolen artifacts not enough to convince you of their humanity?
Is there a reason to display human remains like a curio shop, as if broken bones of robbed graves are decorative? Is there pride in the imperial perversion of a burial rite? I typically do not spend time in funeral homes to marvel at the embalming process. Is it essential for me to see the dead remains, the proof of human life, removed from their context, their home, stripped of meaning and replaced with colonial rationale?
It’s a trendy topic lately as if being empathetic goes in and out of style. I wonder if something will change. But I think they will always find different ways to display and profit from separation anxiety.