TAG 2017 Session Title
Temporalities otherwise: Archaeology, relational ontologies and the Time of the Other
Organiser(s) and affiliation(s):
Francesco Orlandi Barbano (Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter) Silvia Truini (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter – Department of Humanities, Archaeology, University of Southampton. Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom)
[email protected]
Email address of principal organiser Session Abstract (up to 300 words)
Archaeology as ‘undisciplined’ practice (Haber 2012; Hamilakis 2013) emerged from the acknowledgement of its disciplinary entanglements with the philosophical and epistemological tenets of Western modernity, and necessarily also with its “darker side” that, as Mignolo (2011) writes, is the irreducible colonial character of the knowledge it produces. With the recent “ontological turn” in theory, archaeological materials came forth as vibrant components of material-sensorial assemblages: but is that enough to counteract the coloniality of (archaeological) knowledge? In this session, we wish to expand the conversation on decoloniality, modernity, and archaeology from the realm of materiality to that of time, focussing on the discipline’s many “others”: non-professional local communities —beyond the boundaries of the political category of “indigeneity”— but also the materials themselves. If “the selfdetermination of the Other is the other-determination of the Self” (Holbraad et al. 2014), we seek to explore the ways in which archaeologists translate these self-determined temporalities into archaeological knowledge, and how their practice is reshaped in the doing. We hope to promote a dialogue between case-studies from different regional contexts, where alternative voices emerge in the face of dominant archival productions, exceeding their limits and shaping creative ways of being in relation. To this end, we invite contributions —papers, performances, films and photography— around the following topics: • The place and the role of archaeology —as praxis in fieldwork, but also as discipline that retains archival power over the past and is part and parcel of the work of statutory and intra-governmental agencies for heritage conservation— in the production of time and temporalities; • The practices of negotiation with the past of the Others and their
translation into academic knowledge; • The legacies of colonialism/imperialism in the production of archaeological knowledge and new avenues for the creation of emancipatory, counter-modern and alter/native archives; • Memory, materiality and multi-temporal encounters in and around archaeological sites. References: Haber, A. (2012) “Un-Disciplining Archaeology”. Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, 8(1): 55-66. Hamilakis, Y. (2013) Archaeology and the Senses. Human experience, memory, and affect. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Holbraad, M., Pedersen, M. A., Viveiros de Castro, E. (2014) "The Politics of Ontology: Anthropological Positions." Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website, January 13, 2014. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/462-the-politics-of-ontologyanthropological-positions Mignolo, W. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke University Press, Durham.
The paper proposal form can be found at http://tag2017cardiff.org/submissions/ Contributions can be sent to
[email protected] and
[email protected] We look forward to receiving your proposals.
