Anarchival Imaginaries of Refusal

In this article I explore the notion and practice of ‘anarchiving’ by engaging Nnenna Onuoha’s 2021 film Rosenfelde, a film that exemplifies the practices of anarchiving found in movement, sound and imagination. These practices exceed the matrices of official documentation to produce a counter-narrative praxis, making tangible different ways of knowing that connect us to the past, present and future. Through the work of Onuoha’s Rosenfelde, this text reimagines and refuses the conventions and limits of the colonial archive, showing instead the complexity of these entangled histories and their continuing resonance, positioning the imaginary as a central modality with the power to make and break worlds. Therefore, it considers the world-making capacity of anarchival practices such as dance as practices of reclamation, refusal and return that recentre Black ways of knowing and being in the world.