Troubling Archives - (Postcolonial Studies) by Julia Rensing (Paperback)

About the Book

Julia Rensing examines how writers and artists from Namibia and South Africa navigate archival silences, omissions, and power structures to renegotiate historical narratives and address intergenerational trauma. Their creative practices challenge conventional understandings of archives and forms of commemoration, highlighting the diverse experiences that shape Namibian society and memory cultures.

Book Synopsis

Namibia's colonial history casts a long shadow over the country's present. Contemporary authors and artists confront the legacies of German and South African colonial rule and engage creatively with the persistent remnants of the past. In their works, the archive remains both an invaluable and fraught resource for accessing obscured histories. Julia Rensing examines how writers and artists from Namibia and South Africa navigate archival silences, omissions, and power structures to renegotiate historical narratives and address intergenerational trauma. Their creative practices challenge conventional understandings of archives and forms of commemoration, highlighting the diverse experiences that shape Namibian society and memory cultures.

Review Quotes

Troubling Archives is a welcomed contribution to feminist archival research in art and literature. In the last few decades, artists and writers have turned to archival materials as resources with the potential to unsettle conventional historical narratives. Well-researched and thoroughly refreshing, Julia Rensing's Troubling Archives offers thought-provoking analyses of this phenomenon and captures the affective resonance of archives. (Nomusa Makhubu, Professor in Art History at the University of Cape Town)--Nomusa Makhubu, Professor in Art History at the University of Cape Town

This fine-grained exploration of colonial archives, Namibian women's personal narratives, and the transformative engagements with archives by a new generation of artists and authors significantly shifts our way of seeing history and listening to its reverberations. Troubling Archives illuminates multi-perspective approaches to the legacies of truly devastating pasts and traumatic experiences. (Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien & University of Basel)--Dag Henrichsen, Basler Afrika Bibliographien & University of Basel

About the Author

Julia Rensing, born in 1991, is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on discourses related to archives - particularly photographic archives - and their role as sites of knowledge production and contestation. She is a member of freiburg-postkolonial.