Memory and materiality in British-colonial detention camps in Kenya

茅茅起义是1952年至1960年英国殖民时期肯尼亚的一场反殖民斗争。这是一场不对称的冲突，主要发生在基库尤族成员和英国指挥下的肯尼亚军队之间，最终以英国军队的军事胜利告终。在冲突期间，数以万计的基库尤人和其他人未经审判就被拘留在英国人经营的拘留营网络中，他们在那里遭受酷刑、饥饿、性暴力、强迫劳动和法外处决。冲突结束后，100多个拘留营中的许多被拆除，数千份档案被销毁或隐藏。集中营的现实现在在很大程度上局限于少数年迈的幸存者的记忆：因此，在这段历史从人们的记忆中消失之前，记录、调查和面对它是当务之急。几个有残存物资的营地现在作为学校运营。在这一转变过程中，监禁牢房被重新用作宿舍和储藏室，但这些建筑仍然保留着见证冲突的材料。拘留的痕迹可以在印有营地名称的囚犯制作的砖块中找到；在储藏楼屋檐上排列的带刺铁丝网；留在学校场地上的摇摇欲坠的砖窑；曾经是另一个营地周围很深的界沟的浅沟，现在香蕉树生长的地方；以及学校围墙外的乱葬岗。我提议的项目将这些拘留营的遗迹作为活的遗产遗址，与当代肯尼亚社会有着令人担忧的关系。该项目将采取跨学科方法，在以关键记忆研究和后殖民理论为基础的更广泛的理论框架内，将考古调查方法与以社区为基础的遗产测绘项目结合起来。该项目将为拘留的历史考古贡献新的数据和方法，但它也旨在扩大和丰富公众对肯尼亚及其他地区殖民和反殖民遗产的了解，帮助应对帝国的历史不公。该项目不仅考虑了这一遗产对当代肯尼亚和英国经历的重要意义，而且从更广泛的意义上考虑了遗产和考古学在应对殖民遗产方面的作用，世界各地的机构和大学都开始参与其中。

The Mau Mau rebellion was an anti-colonial struggle in British-colonial Kenya from 1952-60. It was an asymmetrical conflict primarily fought between members of the Kikuyu ethnic group and Kenyan troops under British command, ending in a military victory forBritish forces. During the conflict, tens of thousands of Kikuyu and others were detained without trial in a network of British-run detention camps, where they suffered torture, starvation, sexual violence, forced labour, and extra-judicial killings. Following the end of the conflict, many of the over 100 detention camps were dismantled, and thousands of files were destroyed or concealed. The realities of the camps are now largely restricted to the memories of the few, aging survivors: there is thus an urgency to document, investigate, and confront this past before it slips from living memory. Several camps with surviving material remnants now operate as schools. In this process of transformation, confinement cells have been repurposed as dormitories and storage rooms, yet the structures persist in their material witnessing to the conflict. Traces of internment can be found in detainee-made bricks stamped with the camp name; the barbed wire that lines the eaves of storage buildings; the crumbling brick kiln left in the school grounds; the shallow trench, once a deep boundary ditch surrounding another camp, where banana trees now grow; and the mass graves that lie outside the school walls. My proposed project examines the remains of these detention camps as lived heritage sites with fraught relationships to contemporary Kenyan society. The project will take an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together archaeological survey methods with a community-based heritage mapping project, within a broader theoretical framework grounded in critical memory studies and postcolonial theory. This project will contribute novel data and methods to the historical archaeology of internment, but it also aims to expand and enrich the public understanding of colonial and anti-colonial heritage in Kenya and beyond, helping to confront the historical injustices of empire. The project considers not only the significance of this heritage to contemporary Kenyan and British experiences, but in a wider sense the role of heritage and archaeology in confronting colonial legacies, which institutions and universitiesworldwide are beginning to engage in.