Assignment:
We read a chapter by Howard Zinn in which he critiqued the war criminal and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's assertion that "history is the memory of states." Given our recent discussions of the modern state and the colonial state, we can interpret this quote differently than Kissinger intended, understanding it to mean that the production of historical knowledge (and historical memory) is an exercise of state power. In a 4 to 5 page paper, please discuss the role that the Museo de la Plata, a natural history museum that is part of the Natural Sciences School at the National University of La Plata, Argentina, plays in the Ache people's struggle to prevent the state's "memory" from erasing their history. Please address at least three (and possibly all) of the following questions:
• How does the museum depict the Ache people and/or culture?
• How does it hide or obscure the historical experience of the Ache people?
• How does the museum represent and/or contribute to the "project" of the colonial state?
• How does the museum appear in the film and why do you think the filmmaker depicts it this way?
• How do the Ache confront and contest the "memory of the state" in the film, and how do they reclaim their history from the museum?
• Finally, how does the present-day museum relate to the knowledge production of the anthropologists and "men of science" of Damiana's era? Are there any similarities between how the "men of science" approached Damiana and how the museum approaches the Ache people?
Readings:
1. Imagined Communities Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism
By Benedict Anderson
2. Conscripts of Western Civilization
By Talal Asad
Attachment:- The Story of an Aché Girl.zip