Artifact Auscultation: A Speculative Examination for Mati Diop’s Dahomey

Auscultation, n., the action of listening to sounds from the heart, lungs, or other organs

Dahomey (2024), a 67-minute nonfiction film by French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, tracks the French government’s return of 26 royal treasures from the kingdom of Dahomey to the present-day West African Republic of Benin. French colonizers plundered these artifacts, along with thousands of others, in 1892, and, in 2021, returned this mere fraction of stolen items, which received a grand homecoming. But how much cultural heritage resides in historical artifacts whose past has been ripped from the records by colonizers? Is homecoming even possible in a post-post-colonial nation, post-internet, post-pandemic? Reparations, reclamations, restitutions, returns. Wedged between documentary-style footage that tracks the artifacts’ packaging and spirited debate among Benin’s young people, a mysterious voiceover hails from one of the key artifacts. Dahomey suggests that a polyphony of competing voices is the only viable option for tackling these complex subjects. The film tunes in to—and even builds a texture of—uncomfortable, dissonant resonances. Following suit, if we took a speculative stethoscope to artifacts, could we hear these frequencies? Perhaps something is in the mind, matter, and breath of a sentient, time-traveling statue stripped of its name by colonizers. If we listened in, could we hear another history?