Harmful objects (beloved subjects): colonial family archives

Abstract

This is an essay on colonial documents and photos from 1950s and 1960s, that were kept in the attic of my childhood home in Northern Ireland. Most names to which they relate were unrecorded. They were produced by my grandparents, Douglas Crozier (1908-1976) and Ann Hobbs (1907-1981), who migrated to Hong Kong in the 1930s as teachers; and by their son (my father), Julian (1935-2006), who worked (1958-1964) as a district officer in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and mother, Maurna Frizzell (1942-2015), who joined him there in 1961. Before Maurna’s rapid decline, I had intended to engage in museological PhD research on colonial material culture in Ireland. However, domestic upheaval following her death led me to reconsider colonial identities in my own family; and also, the political and anthropological implications of inheriting possessions emanating from the colonial past. As a result, the PhD became autoethnographic. This led to my interest and current research in participant autoethnography as a means of collaboratively exploring the social impacts of imperialism. As a means of conversing with others about the uses of the method, I discuss a selection of colonial family documents here