The Fungible Archive

Abstract

This chapter examines three cases—the Ndembu Archives, the documentary heritage of Madeira, and the Lúcio Costa collection—to show how digitisation has functioned as symbolic compensation that substitutes for, without resolving, the issue of material restitution. The Ndembu Archives, removed from their African political context in 1934 and now largely held by the Overseas Historical Archive, illustrate how joint digitisation and inscription in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register operate as postcolonial legitimising devices, recasting acts of documentary appropriation as shared heritage. Similar dynamics appear in the archival centralisation exercised by the National Archive of Portugal regarding Madeira, and in the transfer of the Lúcio Costa archive to the Casa da Arquitectura in Portugal. The chapter concludes by advancing a neo-custodial perspective that acknowledges the historicity of archival displacement, rejects digital fungibility as a final solution, and recentres material restitution within archival justice.

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