Paper short abstract:

Online archives have become a means of visual return. But postcolonial software and persistent relationships don't suffice to foster encounters, it needs emotional involvement. Applying this successfully, alternative archives from India challenge understandings of 'postcolonial archives'.

Paper long abstract:

Digital archives have by now become a common phenomenon, allowing a visual 'return' of photographs and museum collections and a breakup of visual economies. Based on long term field research, I argue that it is especially community-based archives that successfully generate online encounters on the basis of historic photographs. This 'success' does not come about easily, as there is archiving software available but no manual for creating an engaged audience. Postcolonial database architecture and persistent social relationships - online or offline - are relevant factors, but they do not suffice to foster online encounters. Digital archivists rather need to emotionally involve the prosumers in order to create empathy at a distance.

Ground-breaking digitization projects in former settler colonies sometimes obstruct the view of digital archives in the postcolony. To change this, this paper focuses on online archives with Indian cultural heritage. The Indian way of scrutinizing established institutions and norms challenges visual economies, yet reinstalls them. Alternative, community-based digital archives rest on the internet as a democratic vehicle, yet restore social stratification and cultural norms. They refuse numerically counting impact, but need to constantly add new data and display information in order to generate attention. Disentangling these interrelated internal conflicts also leads to rethinking what the postcolonial idea purports for archives. It shifts the focus - often promoted from a Western perspective - away from institutions in the Global North, and rather conceptualises postcolonial archival work as national or subcontinental concerns.