The chapter explores the archive as a literary form in African literature that addresses civil strife. It emphasizes the fascination with the archive in fictional narratives that respond to mass violence in Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. These conflict contexts and the literatures they have inspired provide some of the most thought-provoking yet challenging examples of twentieth- and twenty-first-century African literary engagements with the archives and examinations of the enduring cultural character of colonial and postcolonial archival productions. The literary fascination with the archive takes on two primary forms. Firstly, there is an examination of colonial archives to comprehend the structural preconditions of postcolonial violence. Secondly, there is a desire to create a new postcolonial archive that bears witness to mass atrocities, mobilizes robust aesthetic techniques to cultivate empathy and ethical reasoning, and deepens our understanding of civil strife in the post-independence era as an ongoing work of imperialism. By highlighting the archival impulse that permeates African literature about civil strife, the chapter underscores the underlying artistic anxieties and concerns over historical and cultural amnesia following mass violence.

‘Archive’ and ‘scholarly edition’ are not securely differentiated categories. As readers we inhabit the same textual field as the documents and texts we seek to define. To record is to read and analyse sufficiently for the archival purpose; to interpret, for the editorial purpose: i.e. to mount an argument about the archival materials directed at a readership. The archival impulse anticipates the editorial, and the editorial rests on the archival. They are not separate or objective categories. Their relationship may be figured as a horizontal slider running from archive on the left to edition on the right.

Every position on the slider involves interpretative judgement, but the archival impulse is more document-facing and the editorial is, relatively speaking, more audience-facing. Each depends upon or anticipates the need for its co-dependent Other. The archival impulse aims to satisfy the shared need for a reliable record of the documentary evidence; the editorial impulse to further interpret it for known or envisaged audiences by taking their anticipated needs into account.

The sliding scroll-bar model dispenses with recent anxiety about archives replacing editions.