Research Labs in motion

Photograph taken by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1905 when the British Association for the Advancement of Science tour through Southern Africa visited Laduma kaTeteleku's homestead for a 'beer drink and cattle braai/feast' arranged by the Natal colonial authorities

Since the introduction of the Research Labs this year, Archive & Public Culture has hosted two very productive sessions.

The first was devoted to the conclusion of Katleho Shoro's MA dissertation, Terms of Engaging and Project-ing Africa(ns): An ethnographic encounter with African Studies through Curate Africa. In May 2012, Curate Africa, an ongoing project centered on photography and curation in Africa, was pre-launched at the University of Cape Town within the university's Africa Month celebrations. 'The project aimed, conceptually and visually, to re-imagine, re-image and re-envision Africa from within Africa and through the lenses of Africans.' Shoro's dissertation is an examination of 'the complexities of knowledge production on Africa and of the question of how one project attempts to negotiate, project and pre-curate its own version of Africa'.

'The Research Labs are invaluable for any student who is at the very final stages of writing his/her dissertation,' says Shoro. 'The Research Lab allowed me to gain an aerial view of my entire body of work through others' eyes and comments. Some of the more technical aspects of writing a thesis - such as correct referencing, structure and flow - were pointed out to me at a time when I could no longer see errors quite as clearly, and my supervisor and I were more focused on fine-tuning the conceptual aspects. Through the session I remembered to apply rules that I had forgotten and learnt new formalities. I submitted my thesis the following Monday knowing that I had attended to many of the suggestions put forward to me, and am grateful for the intellectual energy and time people in invested in thinking through my conclusion with me.'

Leg rattles (gourds, plant fibre), collected by AC Haddon in 1905 from Laduma kaTeteleku's homestead, Swartkops, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

At the second Research Lab, the group discussed the draft introduction to Tribing and Untribing the Archive, a volume that is currently being co-edited by Carolyn Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer. The introduction is provisionally subtitled: 'An investigation into the constituting of the material record pertinent to the late independent and colonial periods of southern KwaZulu-Natal and its contemporary theorization'.

Hamilton and Leibhammer's book seeks to 'draw attention to how political conditions, popular and public discourses and practices, as well as academic disciplines, engage the notion of "tribe" and linked ideas about "tradition", and how this affects, over time, what is available to us as "archive" for the late independent and early colonial periods in the southern part of what is today KwaZulu-Natal'.

'We are interested in how a domain got marked out as that of the tribal and traditional, and sharply distinguished from modernity; how it was denied a changing history and an archive, and endowed instead with timeless culture, attested to by other forms of evidence, notably ethnographic in nature and often in the form of items of material culture,' writes the authors. 'Our purpose is both to probe how things were framed in institutions named archives and to look at what was exiled from those institutions that might be available for recuperation as material that illuminates, inspires and enables thinking about the past.'

APC Research Labs offer an opportunity to present work in progress, and take place at lunchtime on Thursdays. They are open to all APC associates, and interested guests. Any associate who wishes to present should contact APC senior researcher Dr Anette Hoffman: anetteh3@gmail.com.