IntroduçãoEste ensaio explora as relações entre o discurso da justiça e a prática do ritual no governo colonial português em Timor Leste, entre a segunda metade do século XIX e as primeiras décadas do século XX. O objecto de análise é uma instituição singular do governo colonial neste pequeno território, onde os portugueses se encontravam estabelecidos desde longa data.1 Refiro-me ao complexo designado por bandos, as ordens e as instruções de comando emanadas pelo governador português em Díli para as populações dos diversos reinos timorenses dispersos pelo país. A importância do discurso no desenho de relações coloniais de podere, bem assim, em contraponto, de relações de resistência ou subversão a esse poder -tem constituído um tema central na antropologia e nos estudos do colonialismo.2 Contudo, a dominância de definições estritamente linguísticas ou literárias do objecto de análise neste campo de estudos tem deixado na sombra um importante aspecto das formações discursivas do colonialismo, a saber, a inscrição material e ritual dos discursos coloniais, sem a qual a força política da linguagem dificilmente se compreende. Nos estudos pós-coloniais, em especial, vêm imperando abordagens que, na esteira de autores como Edward Said ou Homi Bhabha, tendem a restringir o estudo da palavra colonial às manifestações internas às estruturas literárias, retóricas e linguísticas dos textos (cf. Said 1978;Bhabha 1994). 4 O textualismo destas análises do discurso colonial, como bem observou Robert J. C. Young, falha em não considerar as materialidades do discurso e, logo, do próprio colonialismo (Young 2002:408-410; cf. O'Hanlon & Washbrook 1992;Parry 2004). Paradoxalmente, porém, este foi um aspecto central do fecundo trabalho de Michel Foucault, autor que serviu de principal inspiração à vaga de estudos sobre discurso na crítica pós-colonial. 5Este texto explora o tema do discurso colonial em contraponto a essas tendências, procurando devolver materialidade às palavras coloniais asso-*

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The essay explores the hypothesis of colonial collecting processes involving the active addition of the colonial context and historical past to museum objects through the production of short stories. It examines the emergent historicity of collections through a focus on the "histories" that museum workers and colonial agents have been attaching to scientific collections of human skulls. Drawing on the notions of collection trajectory and historiographical work, it offers an alternative perspective from which to approach the creation of singular histories and individual archives for objects in collections.

In this article, I approach the issues of missing data and testimony in the context of the history of race science, craniology, and collections of human remains housed in museums. In the context of comparative race science, human skulls were intended to be examined in association with short histories and biographical data about their pasts. I investigate how and why such documentation and historicising work formed part of a knowledge economy in the nineteenth century that, at the microscopic scale of the archival documents linked to the collections, was intended to verify the authority of human remains as testimonial evidence of distinct human races.I then show that the association of documents, narratives and historical information with collections of human skulls was a common and important practice in the field of 'anthropology' (which, in nineteenth-century usage, was referred to as the 'science of race' , or 'natural history of man' , and later renamed 'physical anthropology'), and a significant part of its claims to scientificity. At the time, the notion of 'race' , even in craniology (race science's most paradigmatic manifestation), was more than a construct derived purely from the observation of human remains. In the context of such collections, 'race' was an artefact entangled in a network of documents, archives, and narratives associated with anatomical collections -its coming into being shaped, and was shaped by, how collectors, race scientists, and museologists produced, curated, and authenticated the histories and records of specific human skulls over time.

This informative series covers the broad span of modern imperial history while also exploring the recent developments in former colonial states where residues of empire can still be found. The books provide in-depth examinations of empires as competing and complementary power structures encouraging the reader to reconsider their understanding of international and world history during recent centuries.

Mimesis is an important human faculty and a fertile concept in Western intellectual traditions. Colonialism is a critical and lasting event in the history of European societies and their relationship with the wider world. This essay examines the significance of telling the shared history between these two phenomena. It surveys historical and anthropological literature that explores mimesis, imitation and mimicry as concepts and as practices in the history of European colonial and imperial expansionism, across three connected themes: indigenous resistance and anti‐colonialism; the making of identity and alterity in colonial encounters and post‐colonial relationships; and, finally, the presence of mimesis as theory and practice of empire‐building and colonization.

In this article I explore the mimesis of indigenous "customs and law" as a theory and strategy of colonial governance in the Portuguese colony of Timor. By looking at the judicial theories and practice of Portuguese colonial governors, judges, and officers, I propose that a mimetic form of govemmen tality emerged there in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I pay particular attention to the role played by scientific and juridical doctrines, prag matic considerations, and imageries of human difference in its establishment as a rationale for the colonial state. As such, this essay analyzes the productive character of mimesis within colonial government activity. In anthropology and post-colonial studies, the theme of indigenous subversion of, or resistance and opposition to colonialism bears dominantly on approaches to mimicry and mimesis in colonial interactions. 1 Here I will examine alternative routes, inves tigating how mimesis could play in favor of rather than against colonial power. I delve into how, during the heyday of imperialism, European colonial rulers fleshed out a theory of mimesis of the indigenous world as a rationale of