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Against Discovery Doctrines in Minnesota’s Black History
Topics: Black Geographies
, Historical Geography
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Keywords: Black Geographies, archive, settler colonialism, historical geography Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Monday Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 58
Authors:
Jane Henderson, University of California, Berkeley
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Abstract
African American history in Minnesota is characterized by absence; historians approach writing black stories as acts of recovery and visibility. However, this absence tends to push researchers to practice archival methods reliant on notions of discovery and excavation of blackness from the official historical organization of the archive. In this paper, I approach the archives of Minnesota as a field from which to understand the creation of blackness itself in Minnesota’s settler colonial history. I ask how can we come to know a black sense of place, without aligning with practices that replicate the drive for discovery ? As a way to think through this question, I turn to the limitations and silences of the archive as a way to analytically understand racial formation in the region. I argue that the way we come to know blackness in Minnesota is mediated through racial categorizations that distinguish between white settlers and indigenous peoples. The absence of blackness in the archive is a replication of this settler racial binary. With this understanding of racial formation and the archive, black histories that rely solely on visibility and discovery risk replicating settler colonial histories in their attempt to subvert them.
Against Discovery Doctrines in Minnesota’s Black History