origins of the archive
This archive emerged from a Fall 2021 class by the same name in the University of Chicago’s Program in Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies (CRES).
Over 9 weeks, we collectively explored a broad range of conceptual, theoretical, methodological, empirical, and experiential terrains: from linguistic anthropology, sociology, and political science to history of the book; from the British-colonial co-construction of race in Singapore and urban master planning in Pakistan to transformations in the U.S. and Brazilian censuses; from an online community-based museum of Tamil women in Singapore and a trans-archipelagic archive of the Nusantara to a queer counter-mapping of game design. A list of the course’s assigned texts/other works can be found here.
Beyond course readings and discussions, students also took part in hands-on trainings and joined artist talks by the makers of the creative/experiential projects that were included as part of the syllabus. Course participants were given free rein to develop their own projects. Elements of these projects are contained in this online archive.
On the Incompleteness of Annotation
“When I first decided to play the role of the archivist to this project, I had in mind a task of weaving together pieces of information across the various fragments to create an archive that would contain all the necessary information needed to navigate our nusantara. Upon my encounter with each fragment, thoughtfully mediated by their respective interlocutors, I began to realise how counter-intuitive it was to hope for any sort of a nusantara archive for the nature of the nusantara flowed against the state and form of the archive, which works to contain and classify for some sense of preservation. As an experience that transcends geographical and historical boundaries and categories, conceptualising the nusantara as an archive would render it a complete form. Instead, like history, it cannot be so. An annotation is thus an incomplete venture. It does not want to be called an archive for it does not aim to exist as a depository of knowledge. It is never meant to offer one a full picture of anything. In fact, it employs instinct as its source of articulation alongside other stories. To a certain extent, annotation exists as a refuge for the bits of knowledge, memory, and expressions we could not or do not want to translate into information, for it remains to be understood by those who can, and witnessed by those who sense value in them.”
Nurul H. Rashid, “Notes on Annotating,” Pulau Something, 2020.