TWO DAYS AFTER FOREVER A READER ON THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF TIME

DECOLONIZING
ARCHAEOLOGY:
UZMA Z.
RIZVI

ON THE
GLOBAL
HERITAGE
OF
EPISTEMIC
LAZINESS

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Archaeology can no longer feign ignorance: we archaeologists
are fully aware of the imbricated and deeply colonial, racist,
and sexist epistemology of our field. What we are not aware
of though is what to do with that knowledge, or what to do
with the bodies that produce that knowledge, or the things
(artifacts, humans, societies) that are then affected by our
interpretations. I conceive of the process of decolonization
as deconstructing systems of power; that is to say, it can be
the process by which the internal and systemic contradic-
tions within archaeological methodology, stemming from a
colonial history, are made transparent. The postcolonial
critique necessitates a reinterpretation of the prehistoric
past, beginning with an examination of the most basic of all
archaeological practice: the collection of archaeological data.
Providing archaeological methodology and interpretations
with nuance, the postcolonial critique mediates between the
history of archaeology as a colonial product and contemporary
archaeological research. This critique emerged as a particular
response to the production of knowledge about people,
specifically how colonized peoples were written about, histori-
cized, imagined, and treated as existing on the margins in all
aspects of the occidental and civilized.1 As such, the context for
criticality is often thought to be at the margins, but I consider
that margin to be indexical of the whole, because without
its demarcation there would be no center. Without me, the
center cannot exist. And so, I may claim to be “speaking
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of elsewhere” while remaining within.2 This recognition of
my standpoint simultaneously recognizes that there continue
to be forms of epistemic injustice in place that, for example,
hold my knowledge, my being, my words, and that I recognize
whenever I am ever over compensated or under compensated
for my contributions in specific contexts.
There is an epistemic inequality in place when contending
with the past of specific subjectified object|bodies—what I
mean by an epistemic inequality is a systematic, structural
unequalness in the manner in which the knowledge about the
past is formulated and structurally (re)instanti-
ated. That structural inequality is the framework
within which an epistemic injustice takes place or
can happen, specifically in relation to testimonial
injustice and silencing.3 One of the greatest
impacts of colonialism on ancient artifacts was
the othering of them, creating them into objects
of desire and fetish to be collected. Rather than
only thinking of epistemic injustice as a human
issue, I am curious to consider artifact testi-
monial injustice by allowing that “the being of
objects is (as) an issue distinct from the question
of our knowledge of objects.”4 I am bringing into
conversation a question of epistemic injustice
inherently steeped in coloniality with that of
ontology to inform a possible new epistemology
for a decolonized archaeology. It is important that
this critique occur simultaneously at these two
levels: at that of articulating colonial history, its
impact, and legacy, and an institutional critique
of our contemporary archaeological practice.
There is much methodological promiscuity
involved in this endeavor, and necessarily so. Any
one theory has, for the most part, obfuscated pos-
sible meanings of things—forcing meaning to only
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be generated within very few, narrowly defined, acceptable
formats. There is value in thinking of that promiscuity as a
move to create transversal dialogs rather than universalizing
discourses. It is only then that we might be able to identify
something amiss on the level of our first assumptions as
problematic. There is something more that needs to be uncov-
ered, and not uncovering it, or at least attempting to do so, is
in some capacity just lazy.
It is not really a problem in general if one chooses to be
epistemically lazy; an issue only emerges if that same “one”
chooses to do so and continues to create knowledge. If you
are choosing to take on the responsibility of creating systems
of knowledge, then it becomes an ethical obligation to think
through epistemic laziness—because otherwise you are know-
ingly sustaining a system that privileges you, as a knowledge
producer, over all others.5 “There is not needing to know and
there is needing not to know,” a careful distinction drawn in
an argument presented by José Medina, in which that precise
distinction categorizes liberal strategies with respect to racial
and sexual difference within America, in particular when it
comes to ideologies of color-blindness and gender-blindness—
these epistemically lazy positions are predicated on being
actively and proudly ignorant of social positionality.6 If one
were aware of the social context of their action they may not
enact it in a particular manner. For
example, if I said that the way you
interpret an archaeological site is
systematically hindering the abil-
ity for a specific community to live
there, then perhaps you would not
do it. However, if you maintain that
stance, then you should be open to
ethical and moral scrutiny. Particu-
larly, I would argue, if you do so in
the name of nation-building.
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As archaeologists, we have inherited colonial standpoints of
ignorance, and they manifest as contemporary social position-
ing or, bluntly, neocolonialism. Such positioning impacts the
manner in which archaeology is practiced globally: it is deeply
colonial on every level of knowledge construction around the
world. As a discipline it behooves us to think through that
impact. Archaeology may argue that the construction of these
knowledges was already in place. That may be; but it is through
our participation that they are activated. Participation in this
sense may be in the form of acting within those systems, or
failing to act against them.7 Relying on older systems of power
reflects the scarcity of time and energy required to negotiate
and renegotiate our positions of power and privilege when we
enter into the field as researchers, and such economies are
symptomatic of complacency. Most decisions to maintain and
reify power structures are not maliciously intended, but they
are the byproducts of prioritizing research over inequality and
disenfranchisement, and, in a callous sense, of prioritizing our
research over the present, past, or future of others.
This leaves me in a predicament in which I
recognize that there is a system of knowledge now
that is unjust because it was a system of knowl-
edge, i.e., archaeology, created within a colonial
time period. But now that I have recognized the
system as unjust, is that not enough to decolo-
nize it? Decolonizing the system works in some
measure, but it does not take into account how
we build that knowledge. Our epistemic heritage
is predicated upon our relationships with archae-
ological artifacts.
And so we shift from a discussion of episteme
to a critical investigation of not only how we build
knowledge systems, but also with what materials
we build them. What role do these artifacts
play when, in the act of collection, in the act of
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producing them as data, we have already been rendered mute
in order to ask them to convey to us what the “facts” of the
past are. I consider and call this an epistemic injustice double
bind—one that simultaneously and systemically blocks us
from understanding or decoding ourselves, and one that inten-
tionally clouds past meanings of things through a silencing
so that even our contemporary entanglement with them is
effectively orchestrated. And yet, archaeologists are often
placed in positions of translation for these ancient objects. It
is through us that they speak. This paradox is most apparent
when contending with things on trial, or utilized for witness
testimony, as forensic evidence often is.
Foregrounding the development of a forensic aesthetic
through a discussion of the Nuremberg trials and the hunt
for Josef Mengele’s body, Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman
bring attention to the “aesthetic, political and ethical com-
plications” that emerge with the introduction of the object,
specifically, Mengele’s remains within the context of a trial.8
Mengele’s body was discovered in 1985
in Brazil. The use of forensics in identi-
fyingMengele’s skull established a third
form of testimony in addition to that of
the document and the witness and that
was the testimony of forensics. “In the
period coinciding with the discovery
of Mengele’s skull, scientists began to
appear in human rights cases as expert
witnesses, called to interpret and speak
on behalf of things.”9 This is not a sur-
prising move, as forensic anthropologist
Clyde Snow has said, “Bones make good
witness. Although they speak softly, they
never lie and they never forget.”10 Snow
has, in such a quote, not only anthromor-
phized human remains—which I would
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argue is distinct from recognizing their subjectivity—but also
somehow constructed them as more than human, because, as
we all know, we humans do lie and do forget.11
The rhetoric within archaeology continues to proffer us as
stewards of the past, and thus we as archaeologists are called
upon to interpret, advocate, and speak on behalf of things.
Assuming that all knowledge gathered at the archaeological
field site has a specific methodology associated with it, the
desire to decolonize a practice creates a discourse in which
variables include visibility and artifact density to personal bias
based on privilege, scientific and cultural imperialism, and, in
some cases, racism. What made Mengele’s skull such a fascinat-
ing case study is that it became clear that, like archaeological
evidence, there was something deep and buried that had to
be uncovered and then brought to trial. We assume factual
legitimacy of the materials collected underground, as if their
buriedness, their inaccessibility, renders them truthful. And
for the first time, when thinking of the various other forms
of testimony in the Nuremberg trials as being considered
equal—the document, the witness, and the subject/object—it
occurred to me that as the witness may forget, as the docu-
ment/archive may be subjective, so too may the object lie; or
in more kind light, it may change its color from tan to yellow
brown, altering interpretation. The moment the object that I
have been structured to believe in as always being truthful is
not, it opens up a new space of inquiry. This space was not
created to prove that objects lie, but to provide a different
possibility for them to exist ontologically … and thus, resist.
And as that space of inquiry continued to expand, it meant
that not only could objects resist, but that when confronted
with hegemonic powers, they may also actually be silenced.
And this is where I want us to pause, at the thought that the
artifacts have been silenced through the encounter with a
colonial impulse to categorize them into ways of being that
are static.
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Although I have been disciplined to claim amplification of

ENDNOTES
the soft speech of our objects within an epistemically unjust
system, I am now suggesting that our interpretations are com-
promised when the objects themselves have been rendered 1 Uzma Z. Rizvi, “Decolonizing 10 Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover,
Methodologies as Strategies of Practice: Witness from the Grave: The Stories
mute. Recognition of that silencing is not providing the objects Operationalizing the Postcolonial Bones Tell (New York: Little Brown
with a voice but it is a recognition of an injustice that has been Critique in the Archaeology of and Company, 1991), 144.
Rajasthan,” in Archaeology and the
committed against their ability to speak—whether they lie or Postcolonial Critique, ed. Matthew 11 Keenan and Weizman, Mengele’s
tell the truth. And so I have come to this juncture at which I Liebmann and Uzma Z. Rizvi (Walnut Skull, 66. This point is precisely why I
now recognize, it is not only the system that needs to be decol- Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2008), believe the ontological turn within
109–127. archaeology is ethically vital:
onized, but it is also a recognition of the moment of inscription it elevates humans/the witness to the
of the object into text as data that needs to be understood as 2 C.f. José Medina, Epistemologies of level of the document/archive and the
Resistance: Gender and Racial object, even though it might sound
having profound impact upon the ability of the object to say Oppression, Epistemic Injustice and like it is claiming the opposite.
anything: this is the epistemic injustice double bind. Resistant Imaginations (Oxford and New That an objet d’art might be more
Once we begin to excavate the ground upon which we York: Oxford University Press, 2013). significant than the human is a
colonial product. By placing all things
stand, we understand the ways in which we might over or 3 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: on the same level, we might be able
under compensate the object. And for as long as we continue Power and the Ethics of Knowing to decolonize our epistemology.
(Oxford and New York: Oxford
to swing between those extremes, the silent object is sus- University Press, 2007).
pended in an unjust system and victim to archaeology’s global
heritage of epistemic laziness. 4 Levi Bryant, The Democracy of
Objects (London: Open Humanities
Press, 2011), 18. Italics in original.
This is an ongoing project and has benefited from discussions and debates with
many. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my rigorous interlocutors to 5 Medina, Epistemologies of
whom I owe the strength and clarity of this piece: Lisabeth During, Gregg Horowitz, Resistance, 33.
and Murtaza Vali. For being a stellar editor with a critical eye, I am indebted
to Omar Kholeif. A major section of this essay was developed for En Route to 6 Ibid., 34-37. Italics in original.
a Manifesto: Some Thoughts Concerning Epistemic Inequality and Injustice. A
conference paper for “Once you see it, you can’t un-see it (A. Roy): Negotiating 7 Ibid.
Inequality and Coloniality in Anthropological Epistemology and Archaeological
Practice.” This was an invited session by the Archaeology Division of the 8 Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman,
American Anthropological Association. (Chicago, November 20–24, 2013). Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a
Forensic Aesthetics (Berlin and New
York: Sternberg Press, 2012), 13.

9 Ibid., 13.

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