{"id":9936,"date":"2022-04-05T11:25:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T09:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/?post_type=humboldt&p=9936"},"modified":"2026-06-01T11:35:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T09:35:25","slug":"whats-the-use-of-the-archive-questions-of-locality-accessibility-and-digitalisation","status":"publish","type":"dcntrdebates","link":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/dcntr-debates\/debate-2\/whats-the-use-of-the-archive-questions-of-locality-accessibility-and-digitalisation\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the Use of the Archive? Questions of locality, accessibility, and digitalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Case 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

My (Larissa) first confrontation with issues surrounding the decolonisation and locality of archives between the Global North and South took place in 2018, through my visits to a private Nigerian archive.[1]<\/sup><\/a> When I boarded the airplane, I did not know of the existence of this archive yet. Once I had arrived at my destination, I was pointed towards the archive by a historian I had met at the university that was hosting me. He told me about the private and well-preserved archive of one of Nigeria\u2019s most important historians of the twentieth century. The archive was more than one person\u2019s collection, however, as it also served as a local center of historical research and education. Nevertheless, it was not very well known internationally. The heirs and relatives of the late historian wished for the collection to be more widely known and used, especially in a global context, but they wanted to remain in charge of the material as well. In order to secure the funding required to secure the archive for future generations and preserve its content, the owners needed to generate interest from the Global North. This was in line with the legacy they were trying to protect: in the twentieth century, the home where the archive is now located functioned as an important meeting place for historians from all over the world.
\nBy virtue of its location and past, the archive tells an important story of twentieth century African postcolonial history. To follow Luise White in her article on \u2018hodgepodge historiography\u2019, the location of archival materials in different places and often outside of institutions reflects the chaotic nature of postcolonial state formation in Africa and is therefore a complement to its history rather than something that detracts from it .[2]<\/sup><\/a> To achieve greater recognition for its story, the archive was looking at funding opportunities across the world. Access matters to archives because access might help preserve the archive for future generations. However, creating greater access might decrease one\u2019s hold over the archive\u2019s holdings. This is also connected to the question of worth; who determines what we deem worthy enough to put in the archive? Where do we think the archive should be located to be \u2018worthy\u2019?
\nBy using the archive, I, a white European researcher, became a part of its history of being visited by scholars from across the globe and perhaps I represented the hope that the archive could once again become a global center. As I came unannounced, I was a somewhat unexpected, but welcome user. In a way, I represented one of many threads that connected the archive to a potential greater use. My use of the archive \u2018confirmed\u2019 that it was useful to researchers from the Global North. Using an archive, then, is not an apolitical activity. Neither is it necessarily self-evident how an archive can or should be used. Archives are usually created with particular uses and users in mind. It takes effort to figure out how an archive is supposed to be used, how to make it work for you. As Sara Ahmed writes in her phenomological study On the Uses of Use<\/em> (2019): \u2018an archive in use is an archive that could disappear if care is not taken in using the archive\u2019.[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

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\n

A missionary with a group of men who are part of the Marind-anim community on South Papua. Picture by the author.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Case 2:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a researcher working with collections of colonial photography, reflection on the implications and consequences of opening and intensely engaging the colonial photographical archive is an intrinsic part of my (Marleen) research. Why did I open this archive? Why should we look at these pictures, write about these photos? By doing so, do I put people on display? Who has the right to look, to determine, to engage? These questions have been raised before.[4]<\/sup><\/a> Already in 1991, Mieke Bal asked: \u2018doesn’t one repeat the gesture of appropriation and exploitation one seeks to criticize if one reprints as quotations the very material whose use by predecessors is subject to criticism?\u2019[5]<\/sup><\/a>
\nDebates about the ethical responsibilities of the photographic historian in a global image economy are calling attention both to the role of photographic images and to the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings.[6]<\/sup><\/a>
\nIn my case, large collections of missionary photography documenting peoples and histories from all over the world (spanning the late-nineteenth and almost the entire twentieth century) are kept by a heritage centre in a small village in a rural part of the Netherlands. These are sources with great potential and potentially great emotional value, especially for communities with \u2018blank pages in their family albums\u2019.[7]<\/sup><\/a>
\nHow can these collections be made available globally?
\nAnthropological research in Oceania has been leading in terms of considering present meanings of historical photographs, tracing the various uses and connotations of photography through time and space, considering the meaning of colonial photography for the descendants of the communities depicted in the photographs. A relatively recent development is the visual repatriation of colonial photographs, making scattered photographic collections in museums and archives (digitally or physically) available to host communities worldwide.[8]<\/sup><\/a>
\nAlthough large scale digitalisation may improve equal access and allows for different perspectives to emerge, it is not without risks. Loss of context is one risk. People depicted in colonial imagery are \u2013 once again \u2013 subjected to the inquiring gaze of strangers halfway across the world. As they cannot be asked for their permission in this matter, it is important to wonder whether our gaze is legitimised. Issues of privacy and ownership remain pertinent. Who owns or controls access to historical images \u2013 and, consequently, to some of the chief ingredients of history \u2013 has become an urgent, weighty issue, even more so due to the commercialisation and privatisation of digital archives.[9]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Concluding Thoughts <\/strong><\/p>\n

The classical concept of the archive is to deposit, to label, to tuck away \u2018safely\u2019 with the archivist as gatekeeper, to be taken out only for approved uses: exhibition in the museum, examination by\u00a0 researchers, restoration by the curator. This classical idea of the archive may not take into consideration the myriad of ways in which archives are living things, intimately connected to their communities. By using the archive in the \u2018classical\u2019 way we might reinforce pre-existing power structures that primarily benefit the Global North, or repeat imperial narratives and ideas. In her recent work Potential History<\/em>, Ariella A\u00efsha Azoulay discusses the \u2018violence involved in the implementation of practices and procedures such as collecting, classifying, studying, cataloguing, and indexing and on the institutionalization of these practices as neutral with respect to their objects\u2019.[10]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

If we take the two collections described above as a starting points, we might wonder what it means to \u201cshare\u201d the archive, to create greater, global access. Greater access in the first case \u00a0is connected to greater worth which is in itself connected to the location of the archive. It is its location in the Global South which makes it less accessible to researchers in the Global North. Where worth is located, to again follow Ahmed, is important in this story.[11]<\/a> Location, moreover, is intimately connected to the histories of the postcolonial, as White has noted in her article.[12]<\/sup><\/a>
\nFor postcolonial histories of the Global South her \u2018hodgepodge historiography\u2019 means working with the bricolage of history as it has become literally deposited in various corners of the world.[13]<\/sup><\/a>
\nYet, as the second case , concerning the visual archive, digitalisation or repatriation of colonial archives might not be the answer to this dilemma, as it brings with it other questions and risks of ownership, exposure, decontextualisation. To conclude, we want to ask how we can complicate our understanding of how we, as researchers from the Global North, make use of the archive. Is it possible to use the archive in such a way that it becomes a truly shared, democratised space?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Larissa Schulte Nordholt<\/strong> is a lecturer at Leiden University and has recently finished her PhD at the same university. Her PhD research concerned the UNESCO-funded General History of Africa\/l\u2019Histoire G\u00e9n\u00e9rale de l\u2019Afrique (1964-1998). In her dissertation she has analyzed how the UNESCO project aimed to decolonize the writing of African history and what that looked like in practice. She is interested in questions of historiographical decolonization and emancipation in the broadest sense, including in its historiographical practice in archives and through citational politics.<\/em><\/p>\n

Marleen Reichgelt<\/strong> is a PhD candidate at the History Department of the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research project (2017-2022) is centred around missionary photography, which she uses to study the position, agency, and lives of children engaged in the Catholic mission on Netherlands New Guinea between 1905 and 1940. In addition to her PhD project, Marleen works as an archivist at the Heritage Centre for Dutch Monastery Life and as editor with the Yearbook of Women’s History. She has published on missionary photography and colonial childhoods in BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review (2020) and Trajecta (2018).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> We have chosen not to name the archive for now to protect the privacy of all parties involved and to guard against intrusions upon its digitalization process as the archive has now entered into a partnership with an institution in the global north.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Luise White, \u2018Hodgepodge Historiography: Documents, Itineraries, and the Absence of Archives\u2019, History in Africa <\/em>42 (2015), 309-318.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Sara Ahmed, What\u2019s the Use? On the Uses of Use <\/em>(Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 15.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography<\/em> (New York: Zone Books, 2008); Jane Lydon, \u2018\u201cBehold the Tears\u201d: Photography as Colonial Witness\u2019, History of Photography<\/em>, 34.3 (2010), 234\u201350; Mieke Bal, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis.<\/em> (New York: Routledge, 2012); Jane Lydon, The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights.<\/em> (Sydney: NewSouth, 2012); Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography<\/em> (London: Verso, 2012); Tina M. Campt, Listening to Images<\/em> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Mieke Bal, \u2018The Politics of Citation\u2019, Diacritics<\/em>, 21.1 (1991), 26.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Jennifer Tucker and Tina Campt, \u2018Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry\u2019, History and Theory<\/em>, 48.4 (2009), 2.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, ‚When is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?‘, in:\u00a0Photography’s Other Histories, eds.<\/em>\u00a0C. Pinney and N. Peterson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> See Gaynor Macdonald, \u2018Photos in Wiradjuri Biscuit Tins: Negotiating Relatedness and Validating Colonial Histories\u2019, Oceania<\/em>, 73.4 (2003), 225-242; Tommaso Sbriccoli, \u2018Between the Archive and the Village: the Lives of Photographs in Time and Space\u2019, Visual Studies <\/em>31.4 (2016), 295-309; Jane Lydon, \u2018Democratising the Photographic Archive\u2019, in: Kirsty Reid and Fiona Paisley, Sources and <\/em>M<\/em>ethods in <\/em>H<\/em>istories of <\/em>C<\/em>olonialism: <\/em>A<\/em>pproaching the <\/em>I<\/em>mperial <\/em>A<\/em>rchive<\/em> (London: Routledge, 2017), 13-31.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> See Kimberly Christen, \u2018Relationships, Not Records: Digital Heritage and the Ethics of Sharing Indigenous Knowledge Online\u2019, in: The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities<\/em>, edited by J. Sayers (Routledge, 2018); \u200bTemi Odumosu, ‚The Crying Child: On Colonial Archives, Digitization, and Ethics of Care in the Cultural Commons‘, Current Anthropology<\/em> 61 (2020), 289-302.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ariella A\u00efsha Azoulay, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism<\/em> (London: Verso, 2019), 42.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Ahmed, On the Uses of Use, <\/em>12.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Luise White, \u2018Hodgepodge Historiography: Documents, Itineraries, and the Absence of Archives\u2019, History in Africa <\/em>42 (2015), 309-318.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> It is important to add here that former colonial metropoles, such as London and Paris, tend to hold bigger parts of that detritus than the formally colonized places. This does not make it easier for those with less access to time and money to conduct research, often on the past of their own societies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"autor":[603,604],"dcntrdebates_blog":[799],"class_list":["post-9936","dcntrdebates","type-dcntrdebates","status-publish","hentry","autor-larissa-schulte-nordholt","autor-marleen-reichgelt","dcntrdebates_blog-debate-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dcntrdebates\/9936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dcntrdebates"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/dcntrdebates"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dcntrdebates\/9936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10451,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dcntrdebates\/9936\/revisions\/10451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autor?post=9936"},{"taxonomy":"dcntrdebates_blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dcntrdebates_blog?post=9936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}