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Refiguring the Archive for Eras before Writing: Digital Interventions, Affordances and Research Futures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2022

Carolyn Hamilton Open the ORCID record for Carolyn Hamilton [Opens in a new window]  and
Grant McNulty Open the ORCID record for Grant McNulty [Opens in a new window]
Carolyn Hamilton
Affiliation:
1Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Grant McNulty*
Affiliation:
2Independent Scholar, South Africa
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In most of Africa there are written materials from the eras before colonialism that offer a view of the kinds of ideas, cultural life, and currents of political thought, as well as practices and events, that predate substantial European engagement. In the present-day South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, and bordering provinces and countries, there are no equivalent discursive materials that predate a European presence. With colonialism, much knowledge about the remote past was stitched up in imperial and colonial knowledge systems and recording practices. In this paper, we discuss what digital interventions and affordances offer in terms of researching the history of the material used as sources for the remote past, and of releasing that material from distorting or anachronistic colonial classifications and categories. We consider the capacities and significance of digital interventions in calling out sequestered and lost materials, in convening innovative new assemblages of material, in creating conditions conducive to the restoration of neglected details of provenance, in documenting the twists and turns involved in the shaping of materials into sources, and in formally recognizing the archival potential of materials, notably the writings of early African literati, long positioned as being something other than sources and as “not-archive.”

Résumé

Résumé

Dans la majeure partie de l’Afrique, il existe des documents écrits datant d’avant le colonialisme qui offrent une vision des types d’idées, de la vie culturelle et des courants de pensée politique, ainsi que des pratiques et des événements, qui sont antérieurs à un engagement européen substantiel. Dans l’actuelle province sud-africaine du KwaZulu-Natal, et dans les provinces et pays limitrophes, il n’existe pas de matériel discursif équivalent antérieur à la présence européenne. Avec le colonialisme, une grande partie des connaissances sur le passé lointain se sont fondues dans le système de connaissances et les pratiques d’archivage impériaux et coloniaux. Dans cet article, nous discutons de ce que les interventions et les potentialités numériques offrent en termes de recherche sur l’histoire du matériel utilisé comme source pour le passé lointain, et de diffusion de ce matériel provenant de classifications et de catégories coloniales déformantes ou anachroniques. Nous considérons les capacités et l’importance des interventions numériques à appeler les matériaux séquestrés et perdus, à convoquer de nouveaux assemblages innovants de matériaux, à créer des conditions propices à la restauration de détails de provenance négligés, à documenter les rebondissements impliqués dans la transformation des matériaux en sources, et en reconnaissant formellement le potentiel archivistique de ces matériaux, notamment les écrits des premiers lettrés africains, longtemps négligés comme sources et considérés comme des « non-archives ».

Type
Artifacts and Archives Anew
Information
History in Africa , Volume 49 , June 2022 , pp. 131 - 157
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association

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