Ragpickers: Critiquing the Third Science Revolution with Walter Benjamin

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Abstract

This essay juxtaposes the particularity of archaeological traces against the grand narratives manufactured under the banner of the so-called Third Science Revolution. As the latter has come to dominate large parts of archaeological discourse in recent decades, I offer a reading of Walter Benjamin’s trope of the ‘ragpicker’ as a critique of the perceived need in current archaeology for a return of the grand narrative after its problematization during postmodernity. I suggest that the general empirical condition of archaeology, with textile research as an exemplary point of reference, provides an impetus for questioning the current gravitation towards generalizations and the narrative normativity of the macro-perspective. Brushing the grand narrative against the grain is not merely achieved by replacing outdated unilinear master narratives with updated and empirically expanded or scientifically ‘corrected’ interpretations along the same narrative discourse. Rather, writing against the dominant narrative only becomes possible by recognizing archaeology as a perspective from which to attend more carefully — and sensibly — to the epistemology and aesthetics nested in heterogeneous, messy, and erratic fragments, or, in Benjamin’s terms, by doing justice to ‘the rags, the refuse’.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Common Thread : Collected Essays in Honour of Eva Andersson Strand
EditorsUlla Mannering, Marie-Louise Nosch, Anne Drewsen
PublisherBrepols Publishers
Publication date2024
Pages11-23
ISBN (Print)9782503612775
ISBN (Electronic)9782503612782
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Series New Approaches in Archaeology
Volume3

Keywords

  • Faculty of Humanities

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