You can read an excerpt on the metaphysical understandings of the archive from the perspective of indigenous knowledge system below, and the full Manifesto is downloadable here.
Metaphysical understandings of the archive from the perspective of indigenous knowledge system
Rememory-ing
An archive is always memory work; a site of remembering. The decolonial archive offers us a liminal space where the (colonial)pasts, the (neo-colonial) present and (decolonial) futures can meet.
“Archives are always memory work” ~ Neo Musangi
“Archives as the site of remembering” ~ Isabel Raabe
In the decolonial archive we are interested in centering memories of indigenous objects, communities and thinkers. We are interested in using objects as an entry point to different cultural contexts.
“Memory as construction.” ~ El Hadji Malick Ndiaye
“what is the strategy to navigate this? Guerrilla/Robin Hood strategy of 'doing our thing' within a structure which just intends to extract work and knowledge after all?”
Approaching the concept of the archive using Guerilla theory, we envision the decolonial archive as a space where we can Africanize the history of an object thus moving away from the Western eurocentric gaze. Acknowledging the plurality of African heritage, the archive takes a multidisciplinary/multiperspective approach, subverting hegemonic paradigms of archiving. The archive as a site to reclaim our memories and construct stories, (counter) narratives and identities that make sense to us.
“Whose memory?”
““What objects are interesting, to who?”, rather. Because the aesthetics and interests of Western societies are mainstreamed, formalised and given structure at the expense of 'indigenous aesthetics' to pick up on the thought Malick had.” ~ Jim Chuchu
Re-memory is a collective process, allowing us to think together and learn together. We envision a playground or garden with diverse co-dreamers, “co-conspirators in play.” tapping into communal archiving allows us to explore communal memories, giving more insights into the relationality between objects and their cultural contexts. One of the tenets of indigenous ways of knowing is the primacy of communal thinking, world building and knowledge sharing. We don’t think alone in isolation, we think with each other.
“Who are we inviting into that work of imagination? Who are we imagining with?” ~ Neo Musangi
Re-memorying invites us to ask ourselves; what do we remember? What do we want to continue to remember and what do we want to forget? Where do we remember? Thinking with Saidiya Haartman’s critical fabulation we are applying narrative restraint which is the “refusal to fill in gaps and provide closure” thus acknowledging that we are still living within (the aftermath of) these wounds.
“Memory-work is wake-work”~ Christina Sharpe. So, sometimes memorialising and re-membering is a funeral. It is a revisiting of the scene of crime and it is in many ways painful (Thinking of Dionne Brand's “A Map to the Door of No Return” and Saidiya Hartman's visit to the door in Ghana). Going back to Njoki's ideas of grief and letting go. Perhaps thinking also of how imaginations needn't be shared or circulated. Imagination as ritual and the occult and internal.” ~ Neo Musangi
The exercise in rememory invites us to ask questions like: How do we transmute grief in a way that allows us to let go? What are our shared grieving rituals?
“this is not the way to continue. But what happens if we begin to grief lost objects? What happens if we start acting as if the objects are dead? What ties do we want to cut? What do we want to let go? What do we want to heal?” ~ Njoki Ngumi
Opacity
“Glissant's opacity comes to mind. The need to keep some things opaque (not necessarily secret) and probably unknowable.” ~ Neo Musangi
Embodied Knowledge & relational technology
Thinking of it in two terms
1. The autoethnographic approach; where we root ourselves in our experiences as sources of knowledge
2. Approaching The object as a body interacting with other bodies — relationality with cultural contexts and histories to assist in the process of experiencing the knowledge and artefacts as opposed “intellectual” knowledge dumps.
With this in mind, we invite Neema Githere’s voice into the room, we ground our work in Guerilla theory that “examines the political, ontological, and technological underpinnings of the guerrilla in the digital humanities (DH)” which is useful for us who bear the “fatigue of not seeing the truths I experience being represented—specifically in the academy and in more formal institutions. (On Guerilla Theory as Liberatory Practice)
Further, they invite us to explore the concept of afro-presentism as “a genre fusing archival, documentary, and fine arts through new media in the expression of an Afrofuturist lived reality.” (2017) and further developing into “embodied practice, thinking beyond genre, beyond conventional art: What does it mean to be an African body that has survived until this point—that has survived centuries of genocide and erasure and colonization, to still be here now? What are we doing with that legacy right now? And time is essential, it’s a core part of that.”(2022). In this tradition we choose to believe ourselves, our bodies and our embodied experiences as valid sources of knowledge. Reconnecting with presence in the face of systems that benefit from our alienation.