Making visible the invisible: Colonial sources and counter body-archives in the boarding schools for Black “mixed race” Italian children in fascist East Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines life conditions for Black “mixed race children” in the boarding schools of former Italian colonies in East Africa by taking into account both archival colonial sources and oral sources. It problematizes the very notion and function of colonial archival spaces by conceiving “the Archive” as a locus of power characterized by inherent practices of invisibilization in which whiteness has been historically institutionalized and maintained. In contrast, the article suggests the idea of the “body-archive”, namely epidermic and carnal counter-archives of bodies, marked – and scarred – by the histories of colonialism and whiteness. By providing a reading of archival colonial sources “against the grain”, the analysis demonstrates how the gaps, the silences, and the unwritten present in “the Archive” can be filled by the voices and memories of (post)colonial subjects whose counter-narratives may unveil hidden dynamics of power embedded within ideas of knowledge rooted in colonial paradigms.