The Western museum is a battlefield – ideological, political and economic. If almost everyone today wants to “rethink the museum”, few have the audacity to question the very presuppositions of the universal museum, a product of the Enlightenment and colonialism, of a Europe that presents itself as the guardian of the heritage of all humanity.

By surveying the history of the Louvre, discussing the dead ends of the representation of slavery, and examining failed attempts to subvert the museum institution, Françoise Vergès sketches a radical horizon: decolonizing the museum means implementing a "program of absolute disorder," inventing other ways of understanding the human and non-human world that nourish collective creativity and render justice and dignity to the populations who have been dispossessed of it.