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Risk and labour in the archives: archival futures from Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Edgar C. Taylor
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Abstract

The history of archival management in Uganda reveals the foundational relationship between austerity and colonial archival institutions. This article discusses how impoverishment and self-interested editing were central to the bureaucratization of colonial archives at their founding. Extreme austerity in the wake of structural adjustment in the 1980s accelerated archival decay while adding new uncertainties to archivists’ work. Postcolonial archivists’ strategies of risk management and repair work have helped to preserve archives from potentially nefarious editing by partisan officials and publics. However, neglect and decay have also constrained the circulation of archives in public life and have reinforced colonial institutional violence. These conditions of postcolonial institutions require continuous hazardous labour from individuals embedded in the margins of state bureaucracy. This article emphasizes the backstage of archival labour and the risks that archivists navigate in preserving – and managing the public life of – relics of contentious pasts.

Résumé

Résumé

L'histoire de la gestion des archives en Ouganda révèle la relation fondamentale entre austérité et institutions archivistiques coloniales. Cet article traite du rôle central de la paupérisation et des corrections rédactionnelles privilégiant l'intérêt personnel dans la bureaucratisation des archives coloniales au moment de leur création. L'austérité extrême, dans le sillage de l'ajustement structurel des années 1980, a accéléré le déclin de l'archivistique tout en ajoutant de nouvelles incertitudes au travail des archivistes. Les stratégies de gestion du risque et le travail de réparation des archivistes postcoloniaux ont aidé à préserver des archives d'actes rédactionnels potentiellement abominables de publics et de responsables partisans. Cependant, l'abandon et la dégradation ont également restreint la circulation des archives dans la vie publique et ont renforcé la violence institutionnelle coloniale. Ces conditions d'institutions postcoloniales exigent un travail hasardeux continu de la part d'individus ancrés dans les marges de la bureaucratie d’État. Cet article met l'accent sur les coulisses du travail archivistique et sur les risques avec lesquels les archivistes doivent composer dans la préservation de reliques de passés controversés, et dans la gestion de la vie publique de celles-ci.

Type
Intellectual and cultural work in times of austerity
Information
Africa , Volume 91 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 532 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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