Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Transition in the Archive: Destination, Unknown

Fri, March 17, 10:30am to 12:30pm, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Mezzanine, Birchwood Ballroom

Abstract

The field of Burma studies has long been shaped by political conditions in the country, especially since the coup in 1962. For many, this has motivated their research; for anyone interested in the country, it has also generated serious constraints. Research in the archives has long draw on documents produced and catalogued during Burma's time as a colony within British India. But official archival sources after 1962 have been difficult to access. Years of socialist rule, for example, have been ignored by many scholars, collapsed into a single undifferentiated period stretching from after the coup until the recent beginning of a transition away from military rule. During this same time, people in and from Myanmar have worked hard to develop other archives: private collections of books and papers, including those otherwise slated for censorship or destruction; dedicated efforts to document experiences under authoritarianism, some with conscious eyes towards future transitional justice processes; memories held close, some told and some never spoken. These resources and others have developed precisely because of the limitations posed by decades of dictatorship. The direction of the current transition is a course still being charted, but as it develops a new generation of Burma research is developing with it. Engagement with archives long left unexamined will have a crucial role to play. This paper takes stock of some of these transitions from the perspective of a graduate student, drawing on 8 years of research and work in Burma, including with groups involved in developing alternative archives.

Author