Breaking the boxes: archival praxes and dignity in messiness

Abstract

Archival boxes are both practical and conceptual objects, and systems and practices are built around their logic. In this paper, I start by examining uses of literal boxes in very mundane and day-to-day archival works. I go on to discuss how these objects embody an aesthetics of spatial order, historicization, and sanitization. I offer a critique of the box logic as the center of the archival order, and the very basic point of divergence from what communities need, in ways that are both technical and critical. And I compare these archival boxes to seemingly “messy” community practices beyond the boxes. Toward the end, I also provide my own preliminary answer to what we archival researchers and practitioners can do to break out of physical and metaphorical boxes, especially in archival processing. To me, dignity by design is like everyday resistance: it is not only about ethics, slogans, and high goals, but needs to engage these very mundane practices, objects, and systems, and to reimagine them through critique if not art. After all, dignity boils down to these accumulated unassuming moments.