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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
S
outh Africa has a vast archival inheritance from the colonial and apartheid
eras, which includes documents, images found in archival repositories and
other collections, bones, natural specimens, art works, and maps. This inheritance,
shaped in complex ways by the dominant concerns of the time, presents significant
epistemological, conceptual, methodological, and ethical challenges for anyone
delving into the treasure trove. And further complexity is added by post-apartheid
policies and activities that now augment the collection and challenge the very
perimeters and definition of archive itself.
Two aspects of archive have operated in especially stark ways in South Africa. The
absence of a documentary archive was used to designate black South Africans as
timelessly traditional and tribal, while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
bears the weight of managing the political history of the apartheid era. Critical
interrogation of the notion of archive, and specific archives, is therefore a South
African research priority.
At UCT, research in this area has been given renewed vigour under the Chair in Archive
and Public Culture, which offers privileged insights into the normative understandings
of the workings of archive, and an opportunity to interrogate afresh the definition of
archive and develop new theoretical tools and conceptual vocabularies to be used in
Preserving the treasures of national heritage:
The Archive And
Public Culture
Further complexity is added by post-apartheid policies and
activities that now augment the collection and challenge the
very perimeters and definition of archive itself.
The Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative works
closely with other humanities-based research at the university
to provide valuable intellectual support to a vibrant, thriving
university research culture.