Introduction

Reflecting on Stuart Hall's Constituting an Archive (2001), we embrace the concept of the ‘living archive’ that he describes as ‘present, ongoing, continuing, unfinished, open-ended’ (Hall, 2001: 89). This affords us the space to practically and theoretically comprehend ‘how heterogeneous a practice collecting and archiving is’ (Hall, 2001: 91) and to interrogate the concept of archives and archival practice, outside traditional frameworks. Perhaps more importantly, we are cautioned against accepting the burden of a tradition whose tenets construct the archive as a ‘prison-house of the past’ (Hall, 2001: 89) and to broaden our view on what ‘constitutes’ archival practice in the African Diaspora.

Taking this concept of ‘living heritage’ as a starting point, we will show the ways in which focusng on tangibility and intangibility, the formal and the informal, can be used to stretch the concepts of archival practice. We understand archival practice in its broadest sense to include not only traditional documentary practice, but also song, dance and the digital. Throughout this work we highlight the intellectual framework(s) within which we are working; the intellectual forebears who have guided our thinking as well as those whose work we have written about.