Presentations-The+Pulse+of+the+Colonial+Archive


 * 2007 Bernard Gallin Annual Lecture in Asian Anthropology at Michigan State University

The Pulse of the Colonial Archive: Imperial Dispositions in the Netherlands Indies

Prof. Ann Laura Stoler Chair of Anthropology Department Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies New School University, New York City

Friday September 14, 2007 3:00 PM Room 303 International Center Michigan State University**

What is ethnography in the colonial archives? Is it in the what, where, or how we approach these gatherings of documents? Is it in the issues addressed or their treatment? What would and should what Marilyn Strathern calls ethnographic immersement look like on historical colonial ground? Colonial archives are often seen as the remnants of empire, the distorted state-inscribed pyres of rule left behind. Here, I look instead at archiving as process rather than archives as things, at archives as condensed sites of epistemological and political anxiety rather than as skewed sources. In the interstices of repetitive, dry, sanctioned formulae, these Netherlands Indies archives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mark the hierarchies of credibility on which colonial governance relied. Not least, they are sites of what Michel de Certeau called displaced histories, contrary and subjacent but not necessarily subaltern, that hover in the archives long shadow.

Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen) 206 International Center Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
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Phone: 517-353-5040 Fax: 517-432-4845 Website: [|http://www.wid.msu.edu]