Notes on the first Research Development Workshop of 2014
Revisiting a theme that commanded attention during the APC's first research cycle (2008-2013) - that of the role of ancestors in relation to the archive - his paper inaugurated what emerged as a distinctive thread within the workshop - questions of the spectral in relation to the archive. The spectre or ghost is a conceptual figure that has seen some attention in academic debates, perhaps pre-empted by popular culture production. That this trope would (re-)appear in discussions around archives in South Africa is not surprising. Questions concerning the agency of ancestors, hospitality to ghosts, and questions of time and temporality were pursued across the workshop. The role of 'rituals' and repertoires of various kinds - as instances of Paul Gilroy's notion of the 'the changing same', as at once exerting 'custody' over materials concerning the past, in 'imagining' the past, and as opportunities for situated 'listening from the margins' - was explored in a number of papers, notably by Biwa and Hamilton.
While the somewhat alarming plasticity of the notion of the ghost/ghostly featured in the discussion at various points, it was encompassed as a concept not so much to describe the suppressed or unspoken, but as a revenant, for instance in the inexhaustible reappearance of materialisations of racial classification from the colonial and apartheid past. A question that surfaced in relation to several papers (for instance those by Xolelwa Kashe-Katiye and John Wright) is how we