Thurs­day, 09 April – Fri­day, 10 April
Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent
Kirch­weg 33
14129 Berlin

Abstract

From the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry onward, Euro­pean colo­nial expan­sion was insep­a­ra­ble from prac­tices of doc­u­men­ta­tion, clas­si­fi­ca­tion, and record-keep­ing that ren­dered ter­ri­to­ries, peo­ples, and non­hu­man life leg­i­ble to impe­r­i­al regimes, giv­ing rise to colo­nial archives. Far from neu­tral repos­i­to­ries, these archives func­tioned as epis­temic instru­ments that enabled extrac­tion, dis­pos­ses­sion, and dom­i­na­tion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly obscur­ing the phys­i­cal vio­lence through which they were con­tin­u­ous­ly pro­duced and repro­duced. The records pre­served today—textual, audio-visu­al, oral, botan­i­cal, zoo­log­i­cal, and digital—bear the traces of these process­es, reg­is­ter­ing not only admin­is­tra­tive con­trol and sci­en­tif­ic ambi­tion, but also loss, dis­place­ment, extinc­tion, and era­sure. At the same time, colo­nial archives remain deeply ambiva­lent sites: while they have his­tor­i­cal­ly sta­bi­lized unequal pow­er rela­tions and mar­gin­al­ized non-dom­i­nant forms of knowl­edge, they also con­tain the doc­u­men­tary con­di­tions through which past injus­tices can be traced, con­test­ed, and made visible. 

In this work­shop, we use vio­lence as an ana­lyt­i­cal lens to explore the eth­i­cal, epis­te­mo­log­i­cal, and his­to­ri­o­graph­i­cal chal­lenges of work­ing with archival remains that are insep­a­ra­ble from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion yet con­tin­ue to struc­ture con­tem­po­rary research prac­tices. By attend­ing to mate­ri­al­i­ty, sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence, spa­tial design, and archival medi­a­tion, this work­shop also opens pos­si­bil­i­ties for crit­i­cal­ly reimag­in­ing the archive beyond its colo­nial lega­cies. Dur­ing the work­shop, we will have group dis­cus­sions on pub­lished arti­cles that are pro­vid­ed via a read­er before­hand to fur­ther our under­stand­ing of the inex­tri­ca­ble entan­gle­ments of archives, colo­nial­ism and vio­lence we encounter in archival research.

You can find more infor­ma­tion and the pro­gramme here.

If you want to attend, please reg­is­ter at jannes.thode[at]zmo.de. After reg­is­tra­tion we will send you the reader.