A Memory of Elephants (Sol Archer, 2025)

Read

June 2026

Source

Metode, (suggested to read by Luca)

Quotes

"The garden: through one eye, a place of order and beauty; and through the other, the militarised assemblage of life ways, bent to the occupier’s will."

"These images, imported into the territory they purport to show, operate as a strangely liminal historical document, en-naturing the colony’s racialised hierarchy, not just normalising racialised violence, but forcefully inserting it into, or encapsulating it within the spectacle of nature."

"What, exactly, is the meaning of tolerance and order, when applied to a racialised regime of total violence? […] Is tolerance really ever anything more than hatred with good marketing?"

Words

GWC: Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie (Dutch West Indies Company)

littoral: of, relating to, or situated or growing on or near a shore especially of the sea (source)

aurality: of or relating to the ear or to the sense of hearing (source)

fiefdom: an area over which someone exercises control as or in the manner of a feudal lord (source)