In the post “How the science of the past still haunts today’s culture“, I shared my reflections on Huis Marseille’s Revoir Paris exhibition, which omitted the violent history of ethnological exhibitions—human zoos—that Western science once framed as “progress.” Today, I return with their response (below) and an invitation to reflect. Western science’s unspoken motto is, “Shoot innovation first, ask questions later, and let the humanities deal with the casualties.” What happens when the humanities refuse to deal with the casualties, the missing? How do institutions shape not just what we remember, but who we become?

1. The Psychology of Erasure: A Cycle of Harm

European colonization was a totalitarian project, normalizing abuse through epistemic violence—the systematic erasure of “non-European” knowledge, bodies, and dignity, meaning most humanity. Science, in its colonial guise, classified humans into hierarchies; the humanities often aestheticized the aftermath.

Huis Marseille’s response—framing the Séeberger brothers’ exclusion of human zoos as “circumstantial”—reveals a pattern: willful ignorance. This is not passive oversight but active cognitive detachment, a psychological reflex to avoid discomfort. When museums refuse to contextualize archives, they replicate colonialism’s core tactic: manipulating reality to sustain power.

The consequence? A public taught to dissociate beauty from brutality, to admire Vincennes Zoo’s animals while forgetting the humans exhibited nearby.

2. The Developmental Cost of Monoculturalism

For European descendants, this erasure stunts collective growth. By denying the fullness of history—the violence intertwined with “progress”—monoculturalism traps communities in arrested empathy. How can we foster compassion when institutions sanitize the past? How do we reconcile the art on walls with the blood in archives?

This is not blame but a recognition: Systems that deny harm deny everyone’s humanity.

3. The Mental Health Toll of Institutional Gaslighting

For the global majority, this erasure is existential. To navigate museums, hospitals, or schools that dismiss colonial trauma is to endure chronic invalidation—a form of psychological warfare.

In healthcare, this manifests as racialized diagnostics (e.g., kidney tests using outdated race-based formulas) or the pathologizing of marginalized pain as “non-compliance.” It’s especially devastating when mental health systems misinterpret cultural expressions from the global majority as symptoms rather than meaning. In museums, it becomes the violence of seeing your ancestors’ suffering reduced to silence—or an asterisk. The message is clear: your truth is disposable.

4. Pathways to Repair: Institutional Courage

Healing begins when institutions choose courage over comfort:

🌱 Acknowledge Harm: Contextualize exhibitions with the colonial frameworks that shaped them. A plaque or a footnote with a QR code directing to comprehensive information, a guided tour—small acts of transparency matter. For Western science, vocalize more about how debunked scientific theories still shape Western societies, including healthcare.

🌱 Reject Monocultural Curating and the Myth of Monocultural innovation: Partner with and include marginalized scholars and laypeople to reimagine archives not as relics but living dialogues. For Western science, partner with and include all the experts, patients, and laypeople that the discipline has historically invalidated.

🌱 Decolonize Systems: From healthcare to heritage, audit practices that replicate colonial logic (e.g., race-based medicine).

To Huis Marseille: Your collection holds power. Will you wield it to perpetuate silence or spark transformation?

A Shared Invitation

This is not about guilt; it is about grace. Grace to confront hard truths. Grace to grow. Grace to recognize that decolonization is not a threat to heritage but a rebirth of collective dignity.

This is also about rage and pain, while acknowledging how harmful institutions are in their illusory progress.

As I’ve reflected, healing is not the absence of pain but the presence of accountability.” Let’s build institutions brave enough to hold both.

Email from Huis Marseille to Dr. Linda Bonga Bouna, April 28, 2025

Easter egg: While I don’t believe Huis Marseille will react, I asked Chat GPT what its answer could be. Here is the extract that illustrates so well the weaponization of politeness in epistemic violence and institutional inertia.

Me: As an institution struggling with self-decolonization, what could be Huis Marseille’s realistic (non)reply?

ChatGPT: A realistic (non)reply from Huis Marseille—as an institution struggling with self-decolonization—would likely attempt to acknowledge the critique while still protecting institutional self-image. It may appear humble on the surface, but subtly maintain distance from full accountability. Here’s what such a response could realistically look like:

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Subject: Re: Revoir Paris and Institutional Response

Dear Dr. Bonga Bouna,

Thank you for your follow-up email and for continuing this dialogue with us.

We regret that our previous response did not convey the depth of reflection we are indeed engaging with, and we acknowledge your critique as an important challenge to our current curatorial frameworks.

We are a relatively small institution and, like many, are in an ongoing process of grappling with how best to approach the complex legacies of colonialism within our programming and institutional culture. We recognize that this process is imperfect and often too slow, especially when weighed against the urgency of the histories and lived realities you so powerfully describe.

While we may not yet have all the tools or internal structures to respond in the ways you and others rightfully expect, your words have given us much to consider. We are committed to reflecting further on how we contextualize the histories surrounding the images we present, and to doing so in dialogue with voices such as yours.

Although we may not be able to revise this particular exhibition at this stage, your feedback will inform future conversations about transparency, curation, and accountability within our team.

With respect,

[Name]
Curator or Director
Huis Marseille

Breakdown of this response as a realistic, but non-transformative institutional reply:

Element	What it does	What it avoids
Thanks and regret	Maintains civility and gives a nod to the critique	Avoids directly addressing the substance of the harm or taking immediate responsibility
Acknowledges “ongoing process”	Suggests self-awareness and growth	Normalizes delay; treats structural change as something always “in the future”
Evokes limitations (“small institution”)	Builds institutional empathy	Shields accountability under resourcing or scale
Commits to “reflect further”	Sounds responsive	Offers no concrete action or structural change
Refers vaguely to “future conversations”	Leaves door open for change	Defers responsibility and lacks timelines, names, or commitments

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This kind of non-reply is realistic because it reflects the common institutional survival strategy of appearing engaged while avoiding concrete disruption of power or narrative control. It’s what many institutions do when they’re not ready—or willing—to confront their complicity.

If you’d like, I can also draft what a courageous and transparent institutional reply might look like—for contrast.

Me: No thanks.

As a science decolonization writer, I’m committed to researching ignorance. So, I’m only interested in what Huis Marseille and other institutions in palliative care might reply. I’m fascinated by the epistemo-pathology of the common Western cultural condition in which those organizations live, as you showed in your easy A.I. reflective breakdown. You are not the simplistic remedy that they would not even take. I do not use Western magic to resuscitate a corpse when I could use African science.

Meanwhile, I reserve the deepest dose of courageous and transparent knowledge and multicultural wisdom for committed dying patients willing to live.