Searching for the beasts in the archive as methodological praxis

Abstract

European colonialism resulted not only in the extraction and movement of humans, parts of human bodies, and material objects but also in the widespread (often violent) movement of non‐human animals and parts of non‐human animal bodies. However, existing archival and theoretical work on colonialism and anticolonialism has paid very little consideration to these “beasts” that reside in the archive. In this article, drawing from material with relationships to Sri Lanka that I encountered in British museums and archives, I propose searching for the beasts in the archive as a methodological tool available to researchers engaging with (post)colonial archives. I first discuss what it might look like, in methodological terms, to account for non‐human animals in the histories and theories of empire. Then, by focusing on three units of reference—categories, histories, and borders—I show how such an approach unsettles some taken‐for‐granted assumptions that surround dominant taxonomic approaches to knowledge production. Searching for beasts in the archive , then, is not only an exercise in identifying non‐human life within the archive. It also requires being attentive to the apportionments of humanity and animality to different kinds of beings: both human and non‐human.