Cultural archive
Cultural archive is a term associated with social anthropologist Wendy James referencing the repository of knowledge found in everyday interactions that individuals reference to validate their existence in the world. This term was coined during James' research of the Uduk people of Sudan in the 1990's.The term is most commonly associated with Culture and Imperialism, the 1993 collection of essays by postcolonial theorist Edward Said. The term first appears in reference to Rudyard Kipling's Kim and Said suggests the cultural archive is a major site where investments in imperial conquest are developed. These archives include "narratives, histories, and travel tales." Said emphasizes the role of the Western imperial project in the disruption of cultural archives, and theorizes that disciplines such as comparative literature, English, and anthropology can be directly linked to the concept of empire.