Pasts Beyond Memory, Evolution Museums Colonialism

Introduction. 1. Dead Circuses: Expertise, Exhibition, Government. The expert as showman. Time and space in the museum. Evolution as temporal conscience. Expertise, exhibition, government and the 'new liberalism'. International networks and the new museum idea. 2. The Archaeological Gaze of the Historical Sciences. The o and ends of history. Reading the rocks. Filling in time. History in motion. 3. Reassembling the Museum Black-boxing evolution. Bureaucratising the past. Archaeological objects. 4. The Connective Tissue of Civilisation Accumulating pasts: habit, memory and self government. Archaeologising the self and the social. Evolution, culture and liberal government. Evolutionary accumlators. 5. Selective memory: racial recall and civic renewal at the American Museum of Natural History. Evolution, ethics, government: philanthropy and the state. Nature's many lessons. Renewing the race plasm: accumulation and difference. 6. Evolutionary Ground Zero: Colonialism and the Fold of Memory. Colonialism, liberalism, culture and the state. Vicious circles and rigmaroles: the plan of creation. Shallowing the past. From 'let die' to 'let live'. 7. Words, Things and Vision: Evolution 'At a Glance' The spaces in-between: evolution and its blind spots. Seeing and knowing. Classification and the arrangement of the visible. Object ventriloquism and evolutionary expertise. Developing clear-sighted attentiveness. Postscript: Slow Modernism. Endnotes. References. Index.