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Paper short abstract

The paper ethnographically follows objects and documents from colonial field into museum/archive and back into contemporary fieldwork, discussing how field/archive emerge as effects of discursive practices and how knowledge/power relations operate not through erasure but excessive documentation.

Paper long abstract

This paper draws from anthropological PhD research of the identity constructions of the Seljan brothers, two fin-de-siecle Croatian “travellers” and “explorers” of Africa and South America. Inspired by the Foucauldian re/turn in postcolonial studies and historical anthropology, the paper ethnographically traces the recursive movement of objects and statements from (colonial) “field/work” to (colonial) “archives”, from (decolonizing) “archives” back to (postcolonial/anthropological) “fieldwork”. The paper focuses on researching museum documentation, which has traditionally not been considered archival research.

During their joint “field/work” as provincial governors, land-surveyors and “explorers”, the Seljan brothers “authored” and “collected” an extensive collection of material that, through historic contingencies, became part of the collection, documentation and archive of the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb. As part of contemporary trends in museological/archival practices, these diverse materials are now publicly available (filtered and framed by interpretative gestures) on a specialized website and the museums digital catalogue. These are now used by other actors in commemorative and heritage initiatives.

The paper discusses how “fieldwork” and “archive” emerge as effects of discursive practices in different historic contexts and institutional procedures, and how knowledge/power relations operate not through erasure but excessive documentation, stabilizing concepts, domains, and practices, simultaneously foreclosing polarisations, smoothing tensions, and erasing sources. The paper argues that the field/archive distinction is not merely analytically unstable but historically and institutionally re/produced. By collapsing the field/archive opposition rather than holding it in productive tension, the paper proposes an ethnographic rethinking and refocusing on discursive and institutional operations instead of polarised domains.