Pave: Musée de Giveback

France wished to pay a rightful homage to peoples to whom, throughout the ages [and the follow-up], history has all too often done violence. Peoples injured and exterminated by the greed and brutality of conquerors. Peoples humiliated and scorned, denied even their own history. Peoples still now often marginalised [and this], weakened, endangered by the inexorable advance of modernity. Peoples who nevertheless want their dignity restored and acknowledged.

Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack,
giving a little speech, decrying the West,
at the opening of the Musée du Quai Branly
MUSÉE DU QUAI BRANLY mardi 20 juin 2006 (Élysée)

The center text reads:

After centuries of exploiting the labor and resources of her third world colonies, neglecting the aboriginal peoples and looting their cultures, France gives something back ―

A BIG MUSEUM IN PARIS.

Come spend your third world dollars in France.

Paying Guests Only, svp

A year a week and two days ago yesterday (scil., June 20, we are hell for anniversaries) Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack opened to all the Musée du quai Branly, a sort of ethnology fun park. At the time we gave it a pass as we were still nursing our sensibilities from the French government's May art project.

This is a two-part post. Part the first, this post, will look at the establishing philosophy as explained in Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's inaugural address, which we encourage you to skim in full for every drop of Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's drippy oratory (here in English). Part the second will examine the facility and its presentations. (We would like to correspond with anyone who has actually visited the premises. If you have, we are interested in your impressions. Drop us a line at pavefrance-at-gmail.com)

When Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack assails the West for the indignities and sufferings of aboriginal peoples, rattling off a list of abstracted crimes, it is immediately obvious he is speaking foremost of France -- it is just that he cannot bear to speak her name in this context. When he does mention France by name (5x), it is always the nice France, the France that respects everybody, the France that says thank you, the France that is fighting all the good fights. It is this nice France that has built this big museum as a homage to all the aboriginal people the bad France has despoiled.

For as little as €6 (USD $8.10, limited access, additional tariffs apply) or the whole hog €45 pass quai Branly (USD $60.75), which the French government pockets, you can see the rich harvest of French colonialism. Don't dawdle! Hurry along to visit the museum gift shop on your way out ("Pour ne pas perdre un instant et avoir le temps de profiter de la librairie à l’issue de la visite...").

Central to our idea is the rejection of ethnocentrism and of the indefensible and unacceptable pretension of the West that it alone bears the destiny of humanity, and the rejection of false evolutionism, which purports that some peoples remain immutably at an earlier stage of human evolution, and that their cultures, termed “primitive”, only have value as objects of study for anthropologists or, at best, as sources of inspiration for Western artists.

Those are absurd and shocking prejudices, which must be combated. There is no hierarchy of the arts and cultures any more than there is a hierarchy of peoples. First and foremost, the Quai Branly Museum is founded on the belief in the equal dignity of the world's cultures.

Only yahoos think there is such a thing as ranking in art. Michelangelo
and Jeff Koons, they're both good, right? This is every bit as good as this. This as good as this, and this this. Oh, and cultures that are antithethical to individual freedoms have an equivalent standing with cultures that enshrine individual rights, have we got that correct?

Oh, Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack and his pretty nivellating notions! What is distressing are not "absurd and shocking prejudices" ginned up for the purpose of disavowing them. What is distressing is the feeble thinking behind Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's pretty notions.

There is a world of difference between respecting other cultures and pronouncing them all equivalent. Dominant cultures do not dominate some mysterious mix of equivalencies, they dominate ideas, resources, and power. Weak cultures advocate for cultural equivalency because they lack in one or more of these areas. They are looking for a sort of gentlemen's agreement to stave off encroachments by dominant cultures. Which is why France has been beating this drum of years late.

But cultures are not arrived at -- or sustained -- by agreements. They wax and wane with the successes and failures of what they offer to others and what they will risk for themselves.

Not that any of this is lost on Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack. He is the last person to believe France culturally equivalent to anyone.

[La] France n'est pas un pays comme les autres. Elle a des responsabilités particulières, héritées de son histoire et des valeurs universelles qu'elle a contribué à forger.

[France isn't a country like others. She has special responsibilities, inherited from her history and the universal values she has helped forge.]

Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack,
explaining why France is more equivalent than other cultures
PALAIS DE L'ÉLYSÉE le dimanche 11 mars 2007 (Élysée)

Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack looks to a future where France won't be the big player she was in the 19th century. So his plan appears to be to hold everyone even until France can recover her genius and start dominating again.

Cultural equivalence? Oh! Mes amis, you must be joking! I was. Now shut up and fall in line.

PFFT (What is this?): Honoring aboriginal peoples 2½ | Self-adoration of French cultural notions 5 | Rayonnement français ½