Hidden Stories

Abstract

Mainstream discourses of migration and populist voices tend to be based on assumed distance between European subjects and migrant populations, disfiguring historical connections through time. This makes the excavation of Europe’s racist and imperial history particularly important as an intervention. The essay focuses on a bust collection in El Museo Canario in Gran Canaria, bought from France in the late nineteenth century, positioning the busts as folded objects in Amade M’charek’s sense. The unfolding exposes stories of an extensive global past where racism and imperialism are central components, in addition to not only hinting at the importance of race science in Europe, but also how areas on the margins of Europe could better insert themselves into larger narratives of modernization through their participation in scientific racism.

Keywords:

• Canary Islands
• evolution
• folded objects
• imperialism
• museums
• phrenology
• plaster casts
• race science
• racism

Acknowledgments

I am really grateful for the kindness and support that I received from El Museo Canario, Museo Nacional de Anthropologia and Musée de l'Homme, especially José Luis Mingote Calderón and Teresa Delgado Darias. Also, many thanks to Lía J. Rivero Rodríguez, Robert Gomes, and Álvaro Franco Montesdeoca.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Spanish conquered the islands in the fifteenth century, with other European countries engaging in military operations there since the middle of the fourteenth century (Tejera Gaspar and Aznar Vallejo 1992; Pintado and González Marrero 2016).

2 Chil’s emphasis on human evolution in general was condemned by the Canary Islands’ bishop (Piqué 1990, 21).

3 Three of these busts were among those that were broken soon after the museum bought them.

4 D’Urville died before he completed his travelogue for publication and M. Vincendon-Dumoulin took over after the end of volume three. He worked from d’Urville’s text written during the trip.

5 Prince Napoléon was the son of a younger brother of Napoléon I.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Háskóli Íslands; Icelandic Centre for Research [grant number 207062-051] and by University of Iceland Research Fund [grant number 80108 and 82930].