Can museums truly be decolonial? A close look at the Swiss Benin Initiative

This dissertation uses the Swiss Benin Initiative (SBI) as a case study to examine how decolonial repatriation can take shape through a cross-institutional, federally funded framework. Through a critical discourse analysis of texts produced by participating museums, I assess both the promise and limits of the initiative. Positioning museums as colonial institutions that construct national identity and Western epistemologies, I draw on Glissant’s (1990) notion of opacity to suggest that artifacts possess living, entangled histories with their colonizers. I remix Schrödinger’s Cat to argue that museums function as carceral spaces (Robinson, 2020) where artifacts exist as “always-dead,” reminding us of their complex, living ties to source communities. Grounded in Fanon (1952) and Césaire (1950), I examine how colonial legacies continue to shape identity, belonging, and cultural memory, situating the SBI within broader efforts to restore being and agency through repatriation. Drawing on Hall (1990) and Gilroy (1993), I interpret the Benin Bronzes as diasporic objects formed through routes rather than roots—linking displacement, memory, and cultural survival. I also explore film as visual, decolonial discourse that translates colonial histories and the emotional dimensions of repatriation. Ultimately, I argue that the SBI is both innovative and constrained, reflecting Switzerland’s distinctive political, cultural, and institutional context—its perceived distance from colonialism, its peace-first national reputation, and its government-backed funding model.