Methods of Memory: Time Travels in the Archives

Abstract

In this article, the author critically reflects on her long project One Day We'll Understand, a multichapter research and art work that complicates the historiography of the “Malayan Emergency,” the anticolonial war in the former British colony of Malaya (1948–60)—made in the context of a growing number of art works globally dealing with the ghosts of empire. In charting the project's various parts, the author discusses how she uses art and multiple modes of archiving to conjure the specters of colonialism and traces of resistance and generate a different form of knowledge and remembrance, and how that offers us possible paths of restitution and repair.