Archives of the Disappeared: Discipline and Method Amidst Ruin

About

Archives of the Disappeared is an interdisciplinary research initiative for the study and documentation of communities, social movements, spaces, lifeworlds, literatures and cultures that have been destroyed through acts of political repression and mass violence. Through a reading group, seminars and masterclasses, as well as lectures by scholars, artists, archivists, and community activists, the initiative will explore the question of ‘archive’ in the context of annihilation.

Researchers rely on empirical and/or textual analysis where finding ‘evidence’ is a core methodological objective. However, evidence can and is erased by perpetrators, be they states, colonial powers or otherwise, through a myriad of tactics, including the denial of culpability and the rejection of attempts at accountability. This initiative addresses the challenges of scholarly, archival, and documentary practices in the context of elimination and loss. How does one document or analyse that which has been erased or disappeared? Where and how is such knowledge stored? We will discuss frameworks and methodologies for the study of traces, ruins, documents, accounts, utterances, silences, memories, and imaginaries left behind. We will explore how scholars, social movements, and artists from communities that were made to disappear have created new kinds of archives, new genres of evidentiary practice, and new techniques of documentation. Finally, we will look at how this knowledge of absence can prompt scholars to rethink epistemologies, methodologies and disciplinary practices within the humanities and social sciences.

Throughout the 2019 – 2021 academic years, the Archives of the Disappeared Research Initiative will organise reading sessions, seminars, lectures, a working papers series, and masterclasses.

To join the mailing list, receive readings and event updates, please contact Mezna Qato.

Supported by by CRASSH and The Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies, Newnham College, at the University of Cambridge