A decolonial look at a science museums

Online intervention proposal

Abstract

In this work, concepts that surround the theme of epistemicide were reviewed: cultural indigence, epistemological inversion and diasporic knowledge. The exhibition that took place at Casa Oswaldo Cruz in 2013 and available today in a virtual museum, under the light of the main topics of the Critical Theory of Race (CRT), was then analyzed and named "The Body in African Art". In addition to the racial theme, the exhibition makes powerful links with subjects related to the natural sciences, more specifically the teaching of chemistry and biology, evidenced through an itinerary training that intends to explore the works in the virtual exhibition. Formative pathways are always designed based on the contents to be developed, establishing a relationship between classes and objects of knowledge. In the case of the elaborated plan, designed based on the powers of an online and guided visit to a museum, the specific contents allow the itinerary to be explored with the students, aiming to put the black person, especially the African, in the place of owner of a knowledge previous, ancestral and different from what seems to be unique: the Eurocentric. It also aimed to create a bridge for contents that refers to the black body, a symbol in the process of erasing in the construction of contemporary science. Through the TCR, the exhibition sessions give meaning to the displacements and the trajectory of the article's synthesis intends, above all, to be an open space for other productions.

Keywords: museum; epistemicide; ethnoscience; TCR.