LISTENING TO COLONIAL HISTORY, echoes of coercive knowledge production in historical sound recordings from southern Africa

171pp., map, illus., paperback, Basel, 2023

Anette Hoffmann reconnects recordings collected by the Austrian anthropologist and ethnologist Rudolf Pöch during his 1908 expedition to the Kalahari to photographs, ethnographic objects, archival documentation and Pöch’s travelogue, to offer a different reading of the research trip.

“Hoffmann’s work provides a detailed analysis of the significance of historical sound recordings for challenging the colonial archive. Whilst her analysis is presented from a historical archive studies perspective, her ideas deserve to be taken up by anthropologists who are engaged in historical ethnography and may even inspire any decolonial-minded researcher in anthropology, and beyond.” Anthropology Southern Africa

Anette Hoffmann is based at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany.