Abstract
Using a variety of examples of non-traditional archives, the article explores the concept of cultural archives that embraces dynamic events such as commemorations, monuments, and other community-based representations. The paradigm of the postcolonial archive is considered and analyzed as a potential model for such a living cultural archive.
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Notes
Although there are a variety of names, the celebrations are very similar. Jonkonnu is primarily in Jamaica, Crop Over in Barbados, Festival in the British Virgin Islands, Carnival in Trinidad, US Virgin Islands.
Traditional Western models refer to the frameworks primarily established by Hilary Jenkinson and re-conceptualized by Theodore Schellenberg, both of which privilege government-centered dominant narratives.
In the 1980s, an intense dialogue between Indian literary critics known as the Subaltern Studies group explored finding the lives and cultures of Indian peasants and colonials within the official British Colonial records. A pivotal article, “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives,” by literary theorist Gayatri Spivak (1985) suggested the limitations of this approach.
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Bastian, J.A. The records of memory, the archives of identity: celebrations, texts and archival sensibilities. Arch Sci 13, 121–131 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9184-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9184-3