Thinking about colonial institutions through a framework of hoarding

Abstract

This commentary is an extension of the roundtable at the 2023 joint meeting of AAA and CASCA on the topic of “colonial hoarding.” When looking at the diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder described by the DSM-5, the similarities are uncanny. From the ways museums and similar institutions obtain and maintain cluttered collections to the reasons for keeping these items, it seems that these institutions exhibit signs of hoarding disorder. This essay provides an overview of this concept of “colonial hoarding,” and argues that a framework of hoarding allows for a reconceptualization of the relationship between institutions that maintain ethnographic collections and the peoples it dispossesses.