Refiguring the Archive for Eras before Writing

Digital Interventions, Affordances and Research Futures

Bibliographic Data

ID12002604
AuthorsC Hamilton (0000-0003-1291-4603, University of Cape Town), Grant McNulty (0000-0003-2685-2407, Research ICT Africa, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume49
Pages131-157
Publication date2022-05-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory in Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hia.2021.19
OpenAlexW4225371873
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

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.”

Affordance · Anachronism · Archaeology · Colonialism · Futures contract · Political science · Politics · Postcolonialism (international relations · Psychological intervention · Social science · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Digital and Traditional Archives Management · History · Psychology · South African History and Culture

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