Paper short abstract:

This paper sets out the themes and objectives of the panel and discussed recent initiatives that are attempting to activate the latent possibilities of ethnographic archives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper sets out the themes and objectives of the panel. We consider the ethnographic archive as a particular kind of archival assemblage: an anthropological legacy, but also a legacy of colonialism and its technologies of power. While such assemblages of knowledge - materialized in objects, photographs, sound recordings, field notes, publications and other media - embody particular historical moments of cross-cultural interaction, as a consequence of being 'archived' they are retrievable in the present. The act of archiving always anticipates future use, and the question we are interested in exploring is what present and future actions and possibilities these assemblages now afford? Drawing on work with the collections assembled by the government anthropologist N. W. Thomas in West Africa in the early 20th century and field recordings made by ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in Southern Africa, we discuss some recent initiatives that are attempting to 'activate' the latent possibilities of such archives.