The Institute for Culture, Literature and Linguistics in collaboration with the project “Indigenous religions” (Institute for History and Religion) presents:
Materiality of objects: Gaidinliu notebooks, repatriation, and the problems of reproduction
by Dr Arkotong Longkumer from the University of Edinburgh.
About the lecture:
This presentation will navigate my experience of returning copies of the “Gaidinliu notebooks” from the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) to the Zeme Nagas of Assam, India. The notebooks were confiscated in 1932 by the British administrators and donated to the museum. They are from a religious movement, the Heraka, and their prophetess, Gaidinliu (1915-1993). Returning the notebooks highlighted a number of theoretical issues in approaching texts, particularly since these were written in a language that is “untranslatable”. Using the notion of textuality (Uzendoski 2012) grounded in dreams, prophecy, songs and visions, I argue that its textuality requires one to examine the notebooks in relation to the millenarian unfolding of the kingdom (Zeme: heguangram). Secondly, to appreciate the value and purpose of the notebooks, one must pay attention to the sonority of sound that manifests the words of the notebooks in song. Finally, these issues point to significant ways in which we understand the relationship between history, language and experience”.