Cultural Trauma and Diversity in Museums: A Report from São Paulo

Abstract

In summer 2017 researchers from the Insti- tute of Cultural Research, and the Depart- ment of Archival Studies at the University of Tartu, conducted fieldwork in São Paulo under the auspices of a European Commis- sion funded project titled Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Re-establishing of Solid Sovereignties (SPECTRESS, 2014–2017). SPECTRESS was a network of nine interna- tional university partners, five from Europe (Ireland, Germany, Poland, Croatia and Esto- nia), two from Asia (India, Japan), one from South America (Brazil), and the USA brought together to research post-traumatic national self-perception in an era that celebrates the global. SPECTRESS as a scholarly exchange program of partners from largely ‘post- traumatic’ states aimed at understanding the negotiation of ‘cultural trauma’ and ‘new sovereignties’ in the 20th and 21st centuries. To document the inscriptions of the ‘post- traumatic’ in forms of public performance was one of the aims of our stay in São Paulo.