Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies. The Example of Hypoglycaemia.

We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body¿s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies

From the Diorama to the Dialogic : A Century of Exhibiting Africa at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History

Abstract The article begins with a brief history of anthropological collections of African material culture at the Smithsonian from the 1860's to the present. It, then, analyses the history of permanent African exhibits at the Smithsonian and the relationship of each exhibit to specifie anthropological theories. The museum's first permanent exhibit was on view from the end of the 19th century to the 1960's. Its second permanent exhibit opened in the late 1960s and was closed in 1992 amid public controversy. The final section of the article examines the development of the current permanent exhibition, African Voices, which is schedulted to open in late 1999. It explores the issue of representation of Africa and Africans in public museums and examines the development process for the new exhibit. This process has involved the active participation of various stakeholder communities in the conceptualization and realization of the exhibition.Arnoldi Mary Jo. From the Diorama to the Dialogic : A Century of Exhibiting Africa at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 39, n°155-156, 1999. Prélever, exhiber. La mise en musées. pp. 701-726