Archiving the audible debris of empire: on a mission between Africa and Britain

Johnson-Williams, Erin

Abstract

Derrida’s work on ‘archive fever’ has prompted a great deal of academic reflection about the archive and what a critical ‘archiving’ of the past can imply for our understanding of the present. And yet, if the object of historical study is musical sound, what can a ‘fevered’ approach to the archive tell us through the silence of its dusty materials? When adding in the further complexity of a colonial context, the archiving of what Stoler has termed the ‘imperial debris’ of empire brings up a further conundrum: that of what I call here the ‘audible debris’ of empire: i.e. the sonic traces of power and resistance through musical sound that are otherwise absent from traditional historical narratives. In this article, I examine nineteenth-century British attitudes about music at the South African mission station of Lovedale in order to interrogate what a ‘destabilised’ archival awareness can bring to postcolonial musical scholarship. I ask how the structures of colonial archiving that created the imperial historiography of Lovedale (the ‘archival imaginary’) have influenced and reinforced the ‘disciplining strains’ of Lovedale’s musical activities. In turn, I also consider how these ‘disciplining strains’ have created audible legacies that are themselves musical archives of imperial processes.

Citation

Johnson-Williams, E. (2023). Archiving the audible debris of empire: on a mission between Africa and Britain. Postcolonial Studies, 26(3), 360-385. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2023.2243082

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 8, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Aug 8, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 10, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 10, 2023
• Journal: Postcolonial Studies
• Print ISSN: 1368-8790
• Electronic ISSN: 1466-1888
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 360-385
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2023.2243082
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1904252