Risk and labour in the archives: archival futures from Uganda

The history of archival management in Uganda reveals the foundational relationship between austerity and colonial archival institutions. This article discusses how impoverishment and self-interested editing were central to the bureaucratization of colonial archives at their founding. Extreme austerity in the wake of structural adjustment in the 1980s accelerated archival decay while adding new uncertainties to archivists’ work. Postcolonial archivists’ strategies of risk management and repair work have helped to preserve archives from potentially nefarious editing by partisan officials and publics. However, neglect and decay have also constrained the circulation of archives in public life and have reinforced colonial institutional violence. These conditions of postcolonial institutions require continuous hazardous labour from individuals embedded in the margins of state bureaucracy. This article emphasizes the backstage of archival labour and the risks that archivists navigate in preserving – and managing the public life of – relics of contentious pasts.