COLONIALISM AND EUROPEAN ARCHAEOLOGY
González-Ruiba, Alfredo, Colonialsim and European Archeology in: Jane Lydon and Uzma Rizvi (eds.): Handbook of Postcolonial Archaeology.Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010, pp. 37-47. Available throug the author's website here: https://www.academia.edu/366003/Colonialism_and_European_archaeology
Future Directions
Colonialism and European archaeology have been close allies for a long time. Even today,the colonial sin is far from being washed away. Postcolonial archaeology has to be lessself-in-dulgent and more critical in order to deconstruct the ongoing relationship withneocolonialism. Here are a few suggestions for producing a more radical archaeology. First,it is necessary to get rid of the condescending language of cooperation and progress, whichsimply transforms the savage of colonialism into the undeveloped native of the postcolony(González-Ruibal 2009). Second, we must take equality seriously (Rancière 1995) and stopdreaming of impossible, idealized partnerships. As Alberto Memmi (2004: 163) reminds us,“Partnership does not make sense except when both partners have a reasonably equal force.”It is still Western archaeologists who study Africa’s past, not the other way around. Third, itis important to embrace politics beyond identity issues, and recognize that politics is all aboutconflict (iek 2007). We have to be able to accept conflict in postcolonial situations. Fromhere, we have to consider ruling out concepts that have been deeply tainted by colonial valuesand Eurocentricity, such as “prehistory” (McNiven and Russell 2005), which situatescontemporary Indigenous communities in another time (Fabian 1983), or “historicalarchaeology,” which only considers Western World History as “historical” (Guha 2002).Then, archaeological traditions in Europe must properly address their colonial pasts andneocolonial presents. And finally, a dichotomy has to be broken between consciouspostcolonial scholars who focus on deconstructing their discipline and researchers who,without caring much about the history of the discipline, Indigenous communities, orcolonialism, tell us how the past truly was (Langebaek 2006: 118).
