The Sights and Sounds of State Violence: Encounters with the Archive of David Oluwale

Abstract

Abstract This article dwells in the archive documenting the existence of David Oluwale, a Nigerian-born British citizen whose life is captured historically by way of his encounters with the state. Working within and against the dynamics of violation, racialization, and dispossession structuring his archival presence, this article looks to the visual and sonic registers of an archive of Black dispossession to excavate histories of anti-Black state violence in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century. Likewise, it considers the extent to which an archive steeped in Black dispossession might offer possibilities for imagining Black emotive lives and constructing histories of Black sentience and affect even as they are produced in the context of racialized violence and duress.