Amar Wahab- York University, Canada
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12835/ve2018.1-0108
Abstract
How do we creatively re-imagine the productive presence of ghosts in the coolie archive? This photo essay revisits the early experimental period of Indian indentureship (1845- 1848) in Trinidad through artistic installations—based on the transcripts of an inquiry into coolie misery and death. The author conducts a creative ‘archival ethnography’ to think about questions around coolie transience and the in/visibility of absented presences in the official record. In doing so, the essay attempts to stage an affective-political circuit of intelligibility to contemplate the ghostworld of indentureship. It is this ghostworld (as another worldliness) that is crucial for understanding the coolie archive as living, contiguous, and counter to official knowledge production.
Keywords
coolie, indentureship, Trinidad, ghostworld, archival ethnography, Kunduppa, transience.
