Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:13:29.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Decolonial archaeology as social justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2018

Yannis Hamilakis
Yannis Hamilakis*
Affiliation:
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, 60 George Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

And now what? This anxious question torments many of us in the current socio-political moment: that of Trumpism and Brexit; of resurgent xenophobia and racism expressed through election results and policies around Europe; and of the return of fascism and Nazism. It is this moment that has prompted González-Ruibal et al. (above) to call for a new, politicised archaeology. In so doing, they urge archaeologists to abandon the soothing liberal but ineffective embrace of communities and the public. They also argue against identitarian politics and the discourse of apolitical and abstract multiculturalism. I am in broad agreement with them, and called some years ago for a shift from ethics to politics, and for an explicit, public political stance (Hamilakis 2007). If the politicisation of archaeology was important 10 years ago, it is much more urgent now.

Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 362 , April 2018 , pp. 518 - 520
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baldwin, J. 2010. The cross of redemption: uncollected writings. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2007. From ethics to politics, in Hamilakis, Y. & Duke, P. (ed.) Archaeology and capitalism: from ethics to politics: 15–40. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the senses: human experience, memory, and affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139024655Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2016. Archaeologies of forced and undocumented migration. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3: 121–39. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.32409Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y. 2017. Sensorial assemblages: affect, memory, and temporality in assemblage thinking. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27: 169–82. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774316000676Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. 2017. Critique of black reason. Translated and introduction by Dubois, L.. Durham (NC): Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373230Google Scholar