Contratiempo: Contract Archaeology or a Trench in the Battle for the Dead

Abstract

Why is it that, in the present context of territorial intervention of capital, contract archaeology (CA) is so efficient in terms of the market? In order to approach an answer to this question, the deep complicities between, on the one side, the theoretical-methodological assumptions technologically reconverted by CA and, on the other, the hegemonic ontological and epistemic assumptions mobilized by the narratives of development are anatomized. After featuring the fundamentals of the specific post-disciplinary form of CA, its totalitarian vocation implied in its opposition to the unheard dissident voices is exposed. In the context of the border, CA can be either seen as an efficient professional expansion (from the hegemonic viewpoint) or as a trench in the battle for the dead.