Black and Indigenous Collectors in the Material and Digital Archive at the Linnean Society of London

伦敦林奈学会物质和数字档案馆中的黑人和土著收藏家

• 批准号: 2721727
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Birkbeck, University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2721727
• 关键词: Black; Indigenous; Collectors; Material; Digital

To an ethnobotanist, conducting research across botanical collections offers an opportunity to reflect on and analyse human-plant relationships through a historical lens, and to situate plant collecting practices within the particular sociopolitical and socioeconomic context that framed early British botanical science, as well as the types of discourse by which plants came to be stored and exhibited as museum artefacts. The late 18th century, when botanical collections came into being, is part of a period of Europeans navigation across the globe in search of new trades, material and symbolic wealth and dominance, and the context in which Africans and other Indigenous people were forcefully displaced, enslaved,entangled and made inter-dependent to and within the British Empire.My research practice embraces the tandem of permanence and flexibility that collections research sanctions; the summoning of past materialities including living beings, and re-framing of the kinds of "truths" attached to, and projected via the epistemologies of their colonial pasts. Botanical collections, seen through Jane Bennett's radical lens on materiality, are not simply sites for knowledge production (as they were somehow considered in the past), but also affective assemblages and "vital materialities" with agency in their possession (Jane Bennett 2010, p.21). Considering the agency of the collection is an interesting idea that can perhaps aid in subverting museum practice, in providing the necessary opening from which to examine the kinds of human-plant relationships that come to define it as such. For example, addressing gatekeeping and other accessibility issues existing across collections research, challenging the rigid nature of scientific classifications themselves, or creating the space or possibilities for a less extractive and more multiverse context-there are many ways by which museum practices might be subverted. Researching Black and Ingenious people's contributions to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British botanical scientific practices is as much about unearthing evidence pertaining to such collaborations, as it is about reassessing the ways in which evidence becomes defined within the Linnean collections. My aim is both to identify and scrutinise the subjectivities evidenced by and in definitions of scientific knowledge, and practices, and to engage in dialogue with (and make a record of) the ways other researchers, particularly those of BPOC heritage negotiate, challenge and produce knowledge across collections. Guiding this research will be Donna Haraway's concept of critical proximity which encourages the creation of situated knowledge as a way of identifying the subjectivities particular to my research approach (Donna Haraway, 1991). Aside from presenting and analysing my findings from working with and through the archival resources available at the Linnean Society of London, I will produce a sensory ethnography-a body of work that will combine visual and sound-based research findings, as the practice best suited to accessing the critical proximity mentioned above, and facilitating the production of the type of situated knowledge necessary for decolonising botanical collections.

对一个民族植物学家来说，在植物收藏品中进行研究提供了一个机会，通过历史的透镜来反思和分析人与植物的关系，并在特定的社会政治和社会经济背景下审视植物收集实践，这些背景构成了早期英国植物科学，以及植物被储存和作为博物馆文物展出的话语类型。18世纪世纪后期，当植物收藏品出现时，是欧洲人在地球仪上航行以寻找新的贸易，物质和象征性财富和统治地位的时期的一部分，以及非洲人和其他土著人民被迫流离失所，奴役，使之相互纠缠，我的研究实践包括收藏研究所认可的持久性和灵活性的结合;召唤过去的物质，包括生物，并重新构建各种“真理”，并通过他们的殖民历史的认识论投射。从简·班尼特关于物质性的激进透镜来看，植物收藏不仅是知识生产的场所（过去人们认为它们是知识生产的场所），而且是情感集合和“重要物质”，它们拥有代理权（简·班尼特，2010年，第21页）。考虑到收藏品的代理是一个有趣的想法，也许可以帮助颠覆博物馆的做法，提供必要的开放，从中检查人类与植物的关系，来定义它。例如，解决现有的收藏研究中的守门和其他可访问性问题，挑战科学分类本身的僵化性质，或者为更少的提取和更多元的背景创造空间或可能性，有许多方法可以颠覆博物馆的做法。研究黑人和聪明人对18世纪和19世纪英国植物学科学实践的贡献，既是为了发掘与这种合作有关的证据，也是为了重新评估林奈收藏中定义证据的方式。我的目标是识别和审查的主观性证明，并在科学知识和实践的定义，并参与对话（并记录）的方式，其他研究人员，特别是那些BPOC遗产谈判，挑战和生产跨集合的知识。指导这项研究将是唐娜哈拉维的关键接近的概念，鼓励创造的情况下的知识，作为一种方式来确定的主体性，特别是我的研究方法（唐娜哈拉维，1991年）。除了介绍和分析我的研究结果，从工作和通过档案资源，在伦敦林奈学会，我将产生一个感官民族志的工作机构，将结合联合收割机视觉和声音为基础的研究结果，作为最适合的做法，以访问上述关键的接近，并促进生产的类型，必要的非殖民化植物收藏的知识。