23 research outputs found
Gatekeepers to the Past? An Archival Guide
No full textThis book is the result of the advanced seminar, “Archives: Gatekeepers to the Past?” taught by Riley Linebaugh and Bettina Severin-Barboutie at Justus Liebig University in winter 2020-21. The course examined archives as dynamic institutions, practices and relationships that are (re-)constructed over time. We critically studied key terms such as provenance, appraisal, respect des fonds and in doing so, students discussed central debates in the historical discipline, such as: the making of archival absence, the problem of hegemonic perspectives, the pursuit of alternative sources, etc. Envisaged as a teaching resource and introduction to archives, this guide documents the authors’ engagement with the political and historiographical power of archives and those who guard them.Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Riley Linebaugh & Bettina Severin-Barboutie: Introduction: Teaching the Archive
Celine Derikartz, Isabella Pianto and Filip Schuffert: The Astonishing Career of the Archive
Heintze, Linda: Keep(ing) the archive dynamic
Marie-Luise Schreiner and Mónica Páez-Sierra: Archives and their Actor Networks
Schulz, Louisa and Lara Stoller: Plural, Changeable and Dynamic: Values of the Archive
Xenia Fink and Ron Heckler: Outlook
Bibliograph
The Man and the Office: How Kenyatta Shaped Presidential Power in Kenya
No full textAnaïs Angelos kürzlich erschienene Biographie von Jomo Kenyatta, Power and the Presidency in Kenya, ist ebenso illustrativ für Kenias ersten Präsidenten wie für das Exekutivbüro, das seine Präsidentschaft überlebt. Angelo argumentiert, dass Kenyattas "discreet and distant" politischer Stil gepaart mit seiner zweideutigen Beziehung zu Mau Mau es Kenyatta ermöglichte, Kenia ohne eine nationalistische Vision zu vereinen. Während er sich von den technischen Aspekten der Herrschaft fernhielt, konsolidierte sich Kenyattas Autorität über nationale Ressourcen während seiner Präsidentschaft.Anaïs Angelo’s recent biography of Jomo Kenyatta, Power and the Presidency in Kenya, is as illustrative of Kenya’s first president as it is of the executive office that outlives his presidency. Angelo argues that Kenyatta’s “discreet and distant” political style paired with his ambiguous relationship to Mau Mau enabled Kenyatta to unite Kenya without a nationalist vision. While he remained distant from the technical aspects of rule, rather delegating them to others, Kenyatta’s authority over national resources consolidated during his presidency
Revealing the Colonial in Common Sense – Then and Now
No full textMit der Essay-Sammlung Duress: Imperial Durabilities in our Times trägt Ann Stoler zur Konzeptarbeit über die andauernden und ständig wandelnden Beziehungen zwischen kolonialer Vergangenheit und heutiger politischer Realität bei. Mit einer breiten geographischen sowie thematischen Spanne untersucht Stoler den Effekt akademischer und politischer Konzeptualisierung von imperialer Geschichte auf die Kontrolle der Parameter mit denen wir die heutige Welt verstehen und wie sich, als direkte Konsequenz, imperiale Strukturen und Beziehungen wandeln. In ihrer Analyse schlägt Stoler neue Herangehensweisen vor, um das koloniale Innereien (colonial entrails) sichtbar zu machen. Diese orientieren sich an drei Hauptinteressen: 1) Der Einfluss von Konzepten auf die Schaffung, Reflektion und Erhaltung von Ungleichheit. 2) Die Schwierigkeit der historischen Arbeit mit kolonialer Geschichte, welche eng mit der heutigen geopolitischen Lage verflochten ist. 3) Das bewusste Verlernen (unlearning) kolonialer Regierungsführung und das kritische Befassen mit Missverständnissen. Als Ergänzung zur üblichen historischen und politischen Analyse bietet Duress den Lesenden methodisches Handwerk zur Verdeutlichung imperiale Beziehungen.In Duress: Imperial Durabilities in our Times Ann Stoler offers a collection of essays contributing to the concept-work on the enduring and shapeshifting relations of a colonial past in the political present. With a grand geographical span and a wide topical scope, Stoler’s focus is on how academic and political conceptualizations of colonial history control the parameters with which we understand the world today and how, as a result, imperial structures and relations change. In her analysis, she offers new tools to make “colonial entrails” (p. 4) visible, guided by three main interests: 1) How concepts produce, reflect and maintain inequity 2) The difficulties of writing colonial histories that are entangled in the geo-political present and 3) “Unlearning” about colonial governance and critically engaging with misunderstandings. Duress provides the reader with methodological devices to clarify imperial relations in addition to original historical and political analysis
Decolonization and In_Visibilities in Colonial Archives: The FCO 141 Series and the (Redemptive?) Power of Placement
No full textTaking up the theme of placement within the context of in_visibilities, this _Perspective shares a series of reflections on the location and availability of colonial archives. It makes specific reference to the FCO 141 series at the National Archives at Kew (England), a series of files released as the result of a 2011 reparations case against the British government for the authorized and systemic use of torture during a war (1952–1960) leading to Kenya’s constitutional independence. The series is comprised of files removed from across the world as Britain’s empire fell, and is located in England despite a fifty-year history of restitution demands. By looking at the ambivalent relationship between archival location and the socio-political placement of the colonial past in England and Kenya, this _Perspective considers how archival custody (re)constructs in_visibilities of the colonial past in the present
The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody
No full textUsing the concept of the ‘colour line,’ by which W.E.B. Du Bois named the problematic ‘relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea,’ this article argues that the ongoing custody of archives displaced to Europe during decolonization constitutes an ‘archival colour line’ that both results from and recapitulates the racism of the imperial project. The article does this by first arguing that developments in post-custodialism return significance to custody, calling into question the value of ‘digital repatriation’ and ‘joint’ or ‘shared heritage.’ Establishing the importance of archival custody, the article then considers the racialized nature of archival displacements in postcolonial contexts, drawing on data from a recent international survey. To look more closely at how such an archival colour line might be constituted, the article examines the dispossession of people from Kericho, Kenya, to illuminate three stages of archival colour line formation; the colonial setting (provenance); decolonization and the reconfiguration of economic interests (appraisal); and postcolonial archives and the momentum of reckoning (custody). The article concludes that the ongoing European custody of the records in question results from and fortifies a global racist order
[Review of] Philip Rosen, The Neglected Dimension: Ethnicity in American Life
No full textThis book was initiated by the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs with funding from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education. It clearly states and carries out its purpose, i.e., alteration of the ordinary high school curriculum to reflect the diversity of the American ethnic heritage. Throughout the text the richness and significance of that diversity is highlighted, emphasizing several times in skillful and simple language that to be a hyphenated American is un-American. The author has gone to great lengths to include writing from a wide variety of ethnic groups in his selections; any student reading them should be able to identify himself or herself as a part of some ethnic group
Lincoln voices artists residency
No full textLincoln Voices – Artist’s Research Residency, was a part-time artists residency based in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lincoln. I undertook the residency with my then collaborative artistic partner, artist Emma Rushton. During the research residency Rushton and I became aware of the unique areas of common lands that border the city centre, West Common, South Common and Cow Paddle Common and to research their history. We also connected with people who uses the commons, including those who have written about them (John Bennett, Phil Grimshaw) and activists who have fought to keep them safe (Mick Commons, Sally Davies and George Wolfendon). Aiming to raise public awareness of these important spaces and their relationship to the Magna Carta, we organised two free public lectures at historically significant sites in Lincoln. Andy Whitman, a specialist in Land rights, democracy and economics gave a public talk at West Common on March 2016. In June 2015, the renowned historian Prof. Peter Linebaugh, author of the Magna Carta Manifesto, gave a lecture at the Victorian Prison of Lincoln’s Castle, home of historic documents Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. The intention of the lectures was also to present alternative ‘counter narratives’ to a series of ‘official’ lectures taking place at Lincoln’s Cathedral. Peter Linebaughs talk “The Future of the Charters of Liberty in the 21st Century: From homo idioticus to femina communis” was presented on Monday 8th June 2015, the 800 anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta.
Linebaugh presented his lecture in the hall of Lincoln Prison from behind a lecturn and purpose built stage we constructed for the site and event. Both lectures were filmed by University of Lincoln’s Media unit and Linebaugh’s lecture was archived on the arts website ThisisTomorrow
Luxury and labour : ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenth-century England
No full textThis thesis examines changing ideas of labouring-class consumption in eighteenthcentury
England. Recent social and economic history has rewritten eighteenthcentury
England in terms of the formation of a commercial society. Against this
backdrop, intellectual and cultural historians have uncovered the formation of
concepts and practices appropriate for a civilised commercial society. Yet, in spite
of the growing evidence that they were increasingly participating in the
developing world of goods, little work has focused on the public discussion of the
labouring classes' consumer desires.
The study is based on the close analysis of pamphlet literature discussing
the labouring classes. It tracks the ideas through which the propertied classes
viewed labouring-class consumption and attempted to determine the exact status
and function of their desires in a commercial society. From within an early
eighteenth-century position which viewed the appetites of the poor as being a
species of luxury, the thesis tracks the emergence of categories and concepts that
made it possible to recognise the labouring classes' consumer desires as part of
commercial society's progressive development. In the later years of the century,
this optimism faded as the interests of capital accumulation and the demands of
labourers were increasingly recognised to be contradictory.
Ultimately, the thesis argues that we cannot understand the ideological
representation of the needs and desires of the poor without also tracing the
changing conceptualisation of their labour, in the same way that we cannot
understand the formation of a commercial society without reference to
proletarianisation and the attack on customary culture. The coalescing practices of
a commercial society, and their ideological expression, rested upon the ever
greater alienation of the labouring classes, from their human needs and powers
