Jocelyne Stahl

Practices of (un)learning. What can and should a postcolonial cultural education at museums look like? An exploration using selected examples.

At the interface of Cultural Studies, New Museology and critical mediation, this research project investigates how aesthetic practices can break through and transform museum structures. In doing so, the potential of a postcolonial cultural education for the work in ethnological museums is taken into account. Starting point for a reflection on this potential will be the process of unlearning learned codes of thinking and behavior patterns.

How can practices of (un)learning in cultural education look like in order to become aware of power structures – and to oppose them? What can be further practices of a postcolonial education and mediation at museums to enable alternative structures? The starting point for answering these questions will be a critical reception of current power relations, a contextualization of knowledge productions, and a deconstruction of binary categorization, all following the postulates of postcolonial pedagogy by the educationalist Patricia Baquero Torres. Through examining examples, possible postcolonial practices of cultural education will be pointed out and further developed.

About

Jocelyne Stahl is a cultural scientist and works as a curator, mediator and researcher on issues of education and mediation in the context of (ethnological) museums and their colonial continuities. She studied media and cultural studies in Düsseldorf and cultural studies in Berlin. Her research focuses and interests are postcolonial and decolonial approaches, aesthetic practices in educational processes as well as theories of space and the inquiry of the dichotomy center | periphery. As a curator and mediator, Jocelyne Stahl works in the field of exhibition making, education and mediation. Since August 2021, Jocelyne Stahl is an Associate Member at the DFG Research Training Group "Aesthetic Practice" at the University of Hildesheim.