Moving Archives Agency, emotions and visual memories of industrialization in Greenland Jørgensen, Anne Mette Publication date: 2017 Document version Other version Document license: CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Jørgensen, A. M. (2017). Moving Archives: Agency, emotions and visual memories of industrialization in Greenland. Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Download date: 08. Apr. 2020 UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN FACULTY OR HUMANITIES PhD Thesis Anne Mette Jørgensen Moving Archives. Agency, emotions and visual memories of industrialization in Greenland Supervisor: Associate Professor Ph.D. Kirsten Thisted Submitted on: 15 February 2017 Name of department: Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies Name of department: Minority Studies Section Author(s): Anne Mette Jørgensen Title and subtitle: Moving Archives. Agency, emotions and visual memories of industrialization in Greenland Topic description: Memory, emotion, agency, history, visual anthropology, methodology, museums, post-colonialism, Greenland Supervisor: Kirsten Thisted Submitted on: 15 February 2017 Cover photography: A table during a photo elicitation interview, Ilulissat April 2015 ©AMJørgensen 2 CONTENTS Pre-face 5 Abstract 7 Resumé in Danish 8 1. Introduction 9 a. Aim and argument 9 b. Research questions 13 c. Analytical framework 13 d. Moving archives - Methodological engagements 16 e. The process 18 f. Outline of the Thesis 23 2. Contexts 27 a. Themes, times, spaces 27 b. Industrialization in Greenland 28 c. Colonial and postcolonial archives and museums 40 d. Industrialization in the Disko Bay Area 52 3. Conceptualizing Memory as Moving Archives 60 a. Analytical framework: Memory, agency and emotion 61 b. Memory as agency 62 c. Memory as practice 65 d. Memory as emotion 67 e. Emotions and ruptures 70 f. Mediated memories 72 g. Narratives and visuals as cultural tools 73 h. Visual memory practices 76 i. Performance and re-contextualisation 78 j. Memory versus history 80 k. Conclusion 82 4. Methodologies: Memory and movement 83 a. Methodological engagements: Memory, archives, movement 83 b. Multi-sitedness and multiple methods 90 c. Participant observations 92 d. A lucky stumble 94 e. Complicity 96 f. Conversations and life-histories 99 g. Photo-elicitations 100 h. Film-elicitations 101 i. Interpreters 102 j. Anonymity 103 k. Gaining access 103 l. Sampling, sites, geographies 104 m. Conclusion 105 3 5. The industrial past in the Greenlandic present 106 a. Industrial spaces in local museums 107 b. Exhibitions as cultural tools 110 c. The local museum as a community memory archive 113 d. Personal cultural memory practices 116 e. Industrial spaces and national cultural heritage 119 f. Public memorials and pride in industrialization? 122 g. Memory, shame and reconciliation 123 h. Conclusion 128 6. Moving an archive – returning Jette Bang’s films on industrialization 129 a. A travelogue af Jette Bang’s films 130 b. Returning Jette Bang’s films 137 c. Remembering through films 144 d. Remembering through photographs 154 e. Conclusion 160 7. Memories of mining: Qullissat and the Black Angel 162 a. Qullissat 164 b. Collective and personal memories of Qullissat 165 c. ‘We can’t be bothered to talk about that old post-colonialism’ 168 d. Post-memories 173 e. A perfect memory? 174 f. Recalling is forgetting 176 g. New futures for Qullissat? 188 h. Memories of the Black Angel 190 i. A Greenlandic working class identity 192 j. Conclusion 199 8. Memories from the fishing industry 201 a. Memories of fishing and hunting in the Disko-bay area 201 b. From kayak to trawler – Nukannguaq’s story 202 c. Corporeal memories 208 d. The hunter 211 e. The triviality of the everyday 213 f. Agency in memory practices 215 g. Protagonists in history? 217 h. Limits of agency? 220 i. A single, poor little shrimp 222 j. Conclusion 224 9. Conclusion 226 Bibliography 231 Appendix 1: List of film screenings, focus group conversations and interviews 249 Appendix 2: Quotations in Greenlandic 252 4 Preface It is always difficult to pinpoint exactly when a project began. Perhaps this project began while I was a student in Aarhus and was encouraged by Professor Ton Otto to pursue my profound interest in visual anthropology methodologies. Or perhaps it began when, together with Greenlandic and Danish colleagues at SILA – the Arctic Research Centre at the National Museum of Denmark – I discovered a dusty pile of metal cans containing celluloid films by the young Danish photographer and film maker Jette Bang and realized that these recordings – with outstanding documentation of early industrial developments in Greenland – had never been screened to a Greenlandic audience. I am indebted to everybody who inspired me during these initial stages. Also, I want to thank the Greenlandic Research Council and the Danish Research Council, which granted the scholarship that made this research possible and ‘Fonden til forskningsfremme’ for sponsoring the common fieldwork of BA student Niviaq Samuelsen and myself, in which she also served as an interpreter and translator in the Greenlandic-language interviews. The museum staff in both Qasigiannguit and Sisimiut participated enthusiastically during the initial stages of this project, thus confirming the relevance of returning Jette Bang’s films and conducting this research project. I am indebted to them and to colleagues at the museums in Ilulissat and Qeqertarsuaq and at the National Museum in Nuuk, as I am to all my other informants, including my three interpreters, who also include Jakob Fly and Sophie Andersen, and who gave me and my project so much attention, care, time, coffee and good company. I extend my gratitude to my supervisors, Birgit Kleist Pedersen at Ilisimatuarfik and Kirsten Thisted at the University of Copenhagen, for not only acting in a professional capacity but also generously sharing both friendships and professional networks. My colleagues at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies have provided a supportive and inspiring base, and the process would not have been the same without the always lovely company of Christine Aster Crone and my productive collaboration with Ann-Sofie Nielsen Gremaud. She, Kirsten and other colleagues in the research network ‘Denmark and the New North Atlantic’ widened my Northern and Arctic horizons from the earliest stages of this project. 5 My colleagues at the National Museum of Denmark, Modern History and World Cultures, not least Christian Sune Pedersen and all the Arctic researchers on the second floor, deserve special thanks for always being helpful, inspiring, thought-provoking – and truly outstanding company. I also want to thank the research network at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in particular Sverker Sörlin, Dag Avango and Peder Roberts, for including me in the Centre of Excellence for Resources, Extractive Industries and Sustainable Arctic Communities (REXSAC) and funding a post-doc position that I very much look forward to. I am deeply indebted to Ton Otto who provided dedicated supervision out of sheer veneration and to Christine Aster Crone and Martin Appelt for valuable readings and comments on my writing, to Bjarne Grønnow for the fine maps, to Einar Lund Jensen for Greenlandic transcriptions and to Dorte H. Silver and Brynhildur Boyce for English proofreading. I want to acknowledge that the encouragement of three men has meant a great deal for my belief in the rather uneven roads that my career has taken: Ton Otto, Martin Appelt and my husband, Peter Randrup. Without your enthusiasm and support - in different ways and at different points in time - I had never embarked on this PhD project. Finally, I want to thank my family, not least my mother Kirsten and my mother-in-law Birthe, for always being there, and Halfdan, Frida and Peter for all your patience and love. Anonymization of informants The names of all informants have been changed in the writing and I have named some by their profession in order to anonymize people’s identities, albeit this is only possible at a certain level (cf. Chapter 4). I have not substituted names of politicians and other public figures. Images and copyrights Copyrights to all images (except image 3, 4 and 5) in the dissertation belong to me. They are all photographs of objects and photographs on the walls, albums and smartphones of my informants that I took as a part of my data collecting. Image 3, 4 and 5 are screenshots from Jette Bang’s films and free of copyrights. The maps in chapter 2 are copyrighted to Bjarne Grønnow, National Museum of Denmark. 6 Abstract This thesis deals with personal and collective memories of industrialization in the Disko Bay area in Greenland, focusing on how people remember their local agency during these seminal transitional years. After the introduction of Self-Government in 2009, the young, postcolonial nation is currently revisiting its written history, reorienting its collective memories and reinterpreting its cultural heritage. Managing the role of the past in the present is central to cultural identifications in the current and continual debates about a future characterized by cultural autonomy and, ultimately, independence. The main argument in this dissertation is that whereas the theme of industrialization is often associated with a discourse of Greenlanders as victims of development, the memories of people who worked with the natural resources in the mining and the fishing industries offer alternative and pivotal narratives that often contain the emotion of pride and a sense of strong personal agency. These personal memories have not been inscribed in history books or museum exhibitions, they have not entered the archives, and their absence remains a problem for historical self-knowledge. Further, the dissertation argues that personal and collective memory practices enter dynamic and complex relations, and that emotions are crucial in these processes. Over time, emotional memory practices may have the capacity to transform even ‘soft’ agency in personal memories into strong, potentially political agency for change.