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Short abstract

Accessing an archive that in many ways is unique to the fabric of Britain’s decolonial history has allowed me to begin graphing ethno-kinships. This has been possible due to a participatory encounter with Firth's family and colleagues, thus re-tracing alternative outlines of our disciplinary methods.

Long abstract

Is there a relationship between talking about developed photos (versus negatives) and then making a link to colonialism and de-colonialism? How can archives, as places of lived sensorial experience, help us ‘unwrite’ and re-write the histories of colonial pasts, so to rethink collection places in a hyper-modern and multi-cultural world? Whose materials are kept? And whose are left behind, destroyed, or erased? Which material is censored or concealed from view – awaiting a time when it’s fine to reveal a different narrative. And who does what during these different phases of storing/storying ethno-biographies.

This presentation shall try to answer some of these questions. Based on short-term access to both personal and professional archives, it offers some shallow musings on a centenarian’s life. I will suggest, however, that as sensory (s)places, archives could be seen as a kind of ‘zone of interest’. In other words, they reveal and conceal layers of disciplined/undisciplined history that can help us (re)tell delicate, sensitive, or taboo stories -- ones existing under the darker recesses of the anthropological/ethnological imagination.