ABSTRACT
This chapter presents 'anonymisation' as originally a colonial narrative and practice that shapes the understanding of postcolonial politics within the global order of mobility and specifically with regards to the Mediterranean. It focuses on the Italian context by investigating anthropometric materials and human remains from early colonial practices which produced racial taxonomies up to the most contemporary technologies used for limiting migrant mobility in the Mediterranean. Human remains, unlike the 'phantasms' created by plaster masks, are instead a more complex and special category of museums' holdings, as ontological and epistemological issues concerning the identity of bones and skulls question the immobility they are forced into. The proximity of contemporary African bones to ancient human specimens belonging to our prehistoric ancestors allowed for the presentation of a gradual paleontological continuity, which was essential to immortalising otherness behind the glass of a showcase.
