ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes quincentenary expositions as telling moments in the representation of world history. It also considers two other kinds of representational practices that flourished during the Columbian Quincentenary: museum exhibitions and oppositional indigenous events. It particularly concerned with how contrasting historical paradigms of discovery, encounter, and conquest played out in these sites of representation. The paradigm gives the appearance of presenting Native American and African perspectives upon what is neutrally called "encounter" and "exchange" while avoiding more critical political and economic concepts such as invasion, conquest, appropriation, exploitation, imperialism, and genocide. The quincentenary was notable, above all, for its diffuseness, its heterogeneity, its polyvocality, that is, for its lack of an encompassing vision, an epitomizing symbol, and a totalizing discourse. The year 1992 was originally billed in the United States as a celebration of discovery, to be presided over by the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission.
