Unarchived Histories

"Traditional historians hold that there can be no history without an archive. But how is one to write a history of prejudice where the evidence that identifies or signifies its everyday forms and discriminatory behaviour is scrappy and ambiguous? The common sense of polarised race, caste, class or gender relations is articulated in rarely archived, historically unpretty and unacknowledged actions. Out of what archive is the history of these practices, which are not events, not datable or even nameable, to be written? Every instance of archiving is accompanied by a process of 'un-archiving': rendering many aspects of social, cultural, political relations in the past and the present as incidental, chaotic, trivial, inconsequential, and therefore 'unhistorical'. This book investigates the extensive domain of such histories, unarchived in the process of archiving those aspects of the human past and present that have been deemed significant at various times, for various reasons, by states, ruling classes and disciplinary historians. Bringing together contributions covering South Asia, the American South, the US generally, South America, and north Africa, this innovative analysis presents novel interpretations of new sources and insightful reconsiderations of material that lies at the centre of current debates"--