Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T22:37:53.899Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fractures and Fragments: Finding Postcolonial Histories of Guinea in Local Archives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2015

John Straussberger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using my experience working in the Regional Archives of Labé (Guinea), this essay examines the importance of using local archives to write political histories of postcolonial Africa. In doing so, I argue that the fractured and fragmentary nature of the postcolonial holdings of archives – often cited as a hurdle to writing histories of Africa after independence – is in fact the product of the states that (sometimes inadequately) maintain these repositories. As such, these “imperfect” archives should be approached as an opportunity to examine the local practice of statehood in postcolonial Africa.

Résumé

Sur la base de mon travail dans les archives régionales de Labé (Guinée-Conakry) je suggère dans cet essai l’importance cruciale des dépôts provinciaux pour écrire une histoire véritablement plurielle du politique en Afrique postcoloniale. Je soutiens que la nature fragmentaire de ces dépôts – souvent invoquée comme un obstacle à l’histoire de l’Afrique après les indépendances – offre une perspective unique sur les instances étatiques locales et sur leur techniques (parfois inaptes) de classement et de conservation documentaire. Il est donc important d’approcher ces archives “imparfaites” comme une opportunité permettant d’explorer les pratiques institutionnelles locales de l’Afrique postcoloniale.

Type
Writing the History of Africa after 1960
Information
History in Africa , Volume 42 , June 2015 , pp. 299 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

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

Curtin, Philip D., “The Archives of Tropical Africa: A Reconnaissance,” Journal of African History 1-1 (1960), 129–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Stephen, “Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa,” Journal of African History 43–1 (2002), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hecht, Gabrielle, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012), 341–350.Google Scholar
Isaacman, Allen, Lalu, Premesh and Nygren, Thomas, “Digitization, History, and the Making of a Postcolonial Archive of Southern African Liberation Struggles: The Aluka Project,” Africa Today 52–2 (2005), 55–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Limb, Peter, “The Digitization of Africa,” Africa Today 52–2 (2005), 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lydon, Ghislaine, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Gregory, “Dust to Dust: A User’s Guide to Local Archives in Mali,” History in Africa 26 (1999), 453–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConnell, Stuart, “Historical Research in Eastern Uganda: Local Archives,” History in Africa 32 (2005), 467–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGovern, Michael, “Unmasking the State: Developing Modern Political Subjectivities in 20th Century Guinea,” PhD dissertation, Emory University (Atlanta, 2004).Google Scholar
Ntewusu, Samuel Aniegye, “Serendipity: Conducting Research on Social History in Ghana’s Archives,” History in Africa 41 (2014), 417–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann L., Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Straussberger, John, “The ‘Particular Situation’ in the Futa Jallon: Ethnicity, Regionalism, and the Nation in Twentieth-Century Guinea,” PhD dissertation, Columbia University (New York, forthcoming).Google Scholar
Suret-Canale, Jean, “La Fin de la Chefferie en Guinée,” Journal of African History 7–3 (1966), 459–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar