AO: This block quote reposted from the conclusion of Isaacman et al. (2005) asks how the archive c/should become viewed as a site not of authority, but of democratic debate and reconfiguration beyond official histories.
"Historians of Africa, who seek out the continent’s post-colonial or post-apartheid futures, understand that the archive cannot merely be approached as a storehouse of historical raw materials: in post-colonial Africa, the archive is the site where the politics of history is rendered meaningful and effective. The image of a historian mining the archive at the beginning of writing therefore requires serious revision. What is equally critical is the form that the recomposition of the archive takes and the quality of historical narration it supports, against the power of inherited orthodoxies, when the historian is unexpectedly unmasked as the new archivist. The modalities of collecting that serve as the foundation of an archive of cadastral prose—of official documents relating to institutions of power—with its obligations to the state, or one that privileges a sense of history as hagiography, no longer adequately serve to answer the demands made on the archive by the public sphere. The question that emerges in the aftermath of the decentering of the archive as state institution is how the archive might work as a public institution—as a space, not of authority, but of democratic debate. By this statement, we do not merely mean to ask how the archive can be made more accessible, or how we might expand its purview to include the perspectives of those who are marked by a prior exclusion: we seek to understand how the reconfiguring of the archive is the point at which a postcolonial history might surpass the limitations of official histories. The question of digitization has to come to terms with the discussion of the archive that has emerged in histories of the struggles against colonialism (Guha 1988; Lalu 2000; Stoler 2002)." (page 75)
AO: This quote highlights the unequal relations of global knowledge production and Africa's often marginalized role despite being a key site of and for knowledges.
"Many initial discussions, which focused primarily on the political economy of the project, were highly charged. Numerous participants expressed suspicion that this digitizing initiative would be yet another North American project designed to appropriate Africa’s patrimony and subvert intellectual property rights and national heritage. Many argued that digitization compromises the value of national heritage by locating it in unequal exchange relations, thereby rendering national histories as mere commodities to be bought and sold in the economic marketplace. Others wanted to make sure that digitized material would be disseminated widely throughout Africa and would not simply be a research tool available to Western scholars and students. A number of archivists expressed concern that Aluka’s proposed online collection of documents would compete with their holdings; they feared that Western researchers would simply use the Aluka collection, thereby diminishing the international standing of their repositories. Finally, several discussants insisted that archives and cultural institutions that agreed to participate should receive a percentage of the presumed profi ts from the project." (page 59)
AO: An important point made by the authors is the importance of careful consideration of who is driving the creation and maintenance of the archive. Who is assembling and curating the materials and for what purposes? This is particularly important in postcolonial contexts which, as the authors highlight require scholars to overcome the traces of colonialism that persist through forms of knowledge production.
"From its inception, in late 2003, one overarching principle has guided “Struggles for Freedom.” For the project to be successful, local scholars had to play the leading role in shaping and directing it, creating its intellectual architecture and filling it with meaningful content. Any other formulation was untenable on intellectual or political grounds, and would forfeit the opportunity to bring the public debate on archives and access to information in some parts of southern Africa to bear on the need for writing postcolonial histories. The term postcolonial here recalls the need for scholars to overcome the traces of colonialism and apartheid that persist through forms of knowledge production." (page 59)