The e-publication Decolonising Archives aims to show how archives bear testimony to what was, even more so than collections. Archives present documents that allow one to understand what happened and in which order. Today Internet technology, combined with rapid moves made on the geopolitical chessboard, make archives a contested site of affirmation, recognition and denial. As such, it is of great importance to be aware of processes of colonialisation and decolonisation taking place as new technology can both be used to affirm existing hegemonic colonial relationships or break them open.

Tracing the change in scope of political responsibility in Botswana amidst unchecked development, anthropologist Julie Livingston offers an urgent parable for understanding the world as a web of relationships that condense past, present, and future.

Tracing the change in scope of political responsibility in Botswana amidst unchecked development, anthropologist Julie Livingston offers an urgent parable for understanding the world as a web of relationships that condense past, present, and future.

In the nineteenth century, under the influence of scientific-rationalism, the concept of the body was transformed into a political tool for representing national identity. Architectural historian Charles Davis reveals the parallels between race and style in modern architecture.

Living with Ghosts: Legacies of Colonialism and Fascism is a constellation of essays, conversations and images that point to the manner in which the legacies of colonialism and fascism reverberate in our present conjuncture. The impulse for producing this issue was a question of whether it may be possible to trace the connections between the violences of the colonial project through the horrors of fascism to current forms of racism, identitarianism and populism – what we initially called ‘an arc’ of colonialism-nationalism-fascism. These shifts are palpable in the contemporary political uncertainties expressed in this collection of texts. Each of the contributors reflect ...

As discussed in the previous conversation with Alejandro Grimson, Argentina is built on a myth of Europeanness, thus concealing its indigenity from its national narrative. This conversation with Axel Lazzari introduces us to the historical and current political situations of the indigenous populations in Argentina. We begin by addressing the very terminology we use and the power of naming as a means of control. Axel then provides us with a short account of the European colonization of the indigenous land, subsequently enforced by the mapping of the territory. We look at the three historical maps below to understand the controlled ...

Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago unfolds an itinerant encounter with nineteenth-century European naturalists in the Malay world, where the theory of evolution by natural selection emerged alongside less celebrated concerns about mass extinction and climate change; by re-considering the reverse hallucinatory condition of colonial science in the tropics—how scientists learned to not see what was manifestly present—the reader-as-exhibition-viewer may exhume from the remains of this will to knowledge an ethical conviction of particular relevance for confronting forms of neocolonization in the Anthropocene.

The Subjective Object engages with the controversial site of the ethnographic museum and the role of the archive. In particular, the 1920’s photographic archive of  from India by the German physical anthropologist and racist theorist Egon von Eickstedt (1892–1965) serves as a case study for an investigation into the role of historical artifacts in light of contemporary political situations. The nine interviews with curators, artists, anthropologists, and social workers provide the core of the book actively discussing the complicated issues around the archive’s function in producing knowledge. An annotated thread of images serves as a critical apparatus addressing the visual ...

This conversation with Chanelle Adams starts by addressing colonial and decolonial methodologies of knowledge production. It then proceeds to describe the history of Madagascar, as well as debunk the (neo)colonial idea of the island being a “terra nullius” as described by Western environmentalist activists. The core of this discussion consists in Chanelle describing her research about the cultural, traditional, social, and political dimensions of medicinal plants in Madagascar, that she calls “pharmacy-gasy.” “Because health is intimately linked to our social lives, I believe it is the ideal intersection to examine power, knowledge, and materials,” she writes. Chanelle Adams approaches her research ...

There is something subtly mysterious about the films and photographs of the Danish artist Ulrik Heltoft. Drawing on literary narratives or scientific sources, his works often explore the conceptual and aesthetic potentials of specific technologies. Despite his experimental use of his media, his photography evinces a uniform clear and brilliant quality. For his exhibition at the Secession, Heltoft has created a new film titled Kabinet. It is based on a piece of social critique that has been adapted for the screen many times: Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843), in which the confrontation with ghosts inspires the old and stingy ...