ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094878ar
G. Brilmyer
{"title":"\"They Weren't Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind\": The Affect of Archival In/Accessibility and \"Emotionally Expensive\" Spatial Un/Belonging","authors":"G. Brilmyer","doi":"10.7202/1094878ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094878ar","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Using semi-structured interviews with disabled archival users and building on the emerging field of critical access studies, this article illustrates the ways in which archival spaces and their in/accessibility affectively impact disabled people. Interviewees describe how they experience barriers to accessibility not only at a basic, architectural level – of not being able to get into a building or archives room – but also through archives' policies and expectations regarding the ways in which archival work is done. The way that accessibility is implemented, even beyond legal compliance, greatly impacts the extent to which disabled researchers feel they belong in archival spaces. Inaccessibility, this research shows, produces a sense of unbelonging; the deprioritization of disability both as a subject or organizing category and as an identity of a potential researcher, shows disabled people that they do not belong in archival spaces, and this is further complicated for multiply marginalized disabled people. By examining the multifaceted ways that disabled people experience inaccessibility, this article focuses on the \"emotionally expensive\" aspects of inaccessibility to emphasize the ways in which barriers compound and accumulate and can prevent disabled people from accessing our own histories. These findings demonstrate how central accessibility is to disabled people's lives: it is almost impossible to talk about our experiences of archival materials and history without discussing how we navigate the multiple barriers to accessing them.résumé:Utilisant des entrevues semi-structurées avec des utilisateurs.trices avec incapacité et construisant sur le domaine émergent des études critiques de l'accès, cet article illustre les manières dont les espaces archivistiques et leur in/accessibilité ont un impact sur les personnes avec incapacité. Les personnes interrogées décrivent comment elles expérimentent les obstacles à l'accessibilité, pas uniquement au niveau de l'architecture des bâtiments et de la difficulté d'accès aux édifices et aux salles de consultation, mais également en ce qui concerne les politiques archivistiques et les attentes face aux procédés et pratiques archivistiques. Au-delà des balises légales, la manière dont l'accessibilité est mise en œuvre a un impact significatif sur la mesure dans laquelle les chercheurs.euses se sentent les bienvenu.e.s dans les espaces archivistiques. Cette recherche démontre que le manque d'accessibilité produit un sentiment où les personnes avec incapacité ne se sentent pas accueillies. La dépriorisation de l'incapacitisme, à la fois comme sujet ou catégorie organisationnelle, ainsi que comme un marqueur identitaire des chercheurs.euses potentiel.le.s, démontre que les personnes avec incapacité ne sont pas considérées et n'ont pas leur place dans les lieux archivistiques. Ce constat est complexifié davantage pour les personnes avec incapacité multimarginalisées. En examinant les facettes multip","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90694222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094880ar
Emily Guerrero
{"title":"Gossip as Practice, Gossip as Care","authors":"Emily Guerrero","doi":"10.7202/1094880ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094880ar","url":null,"abstract":"Often seen as suspect and untrustworthy, gossip as it is currently conceptualized comes from historic attempts by people who have experienced social marginalization to share information, build stronger relationships, and assess a dominant narrative against lived experience. In this article, I will be outlining how gossip has animated my archival work at the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archives, an artist-run centre in Vancouver, BC, and using the Crista Dahl Media Library and Archives as a case study. Several distinct uses of gossip emerge: these include offering space for archives workers to connect and build solidarity, opening up new avenues for reassessing what we consider to be relevant information in archival description, providing strategies for navigating sensitive information within collections, and acting as an alternative to narratives of trauma when considering archival silences. Drawing on practice theory and studies of community archives and deeply influenced by an ethos of transformative justice, this project is connected to the growing body of scholarly work that examines information and memory work through the lens of affect theory and a feminist ethics of care. This work contributes to the articulation of person-centred archival praxis by theorizing gossip as a tactic of care that trains the ear to better notice the experiences, complaints, and contributions of the people surrounding the records at hand.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73706530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094879ar
Krystal Payne
{"title":"Archival Harm Reduction","authors":"Krystal Payne","doi":"10.7202/1094879ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094879ar","url":null,"abstract":"Canadian archives arose from and help maintain white supremacist and settler-colonial frameworks. The inequitable power relations that exist in archives and archival practices contribute to the harms done to Indigenous people and communities;1 they do so through the ongoing entrenchment of settler colonialism and the participation in extractive colonialism that occur within the processes of archiving and through the systemic racism that comes along with these processes. This article lays out the beginnings of a theoretical framework for an archival harm-reduction approach for managing records by, about, and for Indigenous people and communities that are held in settler archival institutions and managed by settler archivists. Built upon an explicit acknowledgement of the harm that can occur within archives and through archival practices, and connecting public health harm-reduction concepts with Indigenous scholars’ ideas around relationality and power, this framework conceptualizes a process for shifting archival power by building relationships to ensure that the people and communities that records are about or from whom records originate are meaningfully involved in the stewardship of such records. The core harmreduction concept of involving people and communities as the experts in their own lives (and records) is extended to archival practice – touching on topics such as consent, agency, autonomy, and social justice as well as on practices that are community-based, participatory, and reparative – helping to further articulate a person-centred archival theory and practice and illuminating the fact that settler archives cannot simply redescribe their way out of white supremacy.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90905892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094882ar
Henria Aton
{"title":"Documenting Disappearance","authors":"Henria Aton","doi":"10.7202/1094882ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094882ar","url":null,"abstract":"On August 12, 2022, Tamil relatives of those forcibly disappeared during the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) marked their 2,000th day of public protest. Since these roadside protests began, elderly women and men searching for their loved ones have passed away and transitional justice promises have failed, but the disappeared have not been found. This article examines archives of the disappeared: collections of files, objects, photographs, etc. about missing loved ones. Paradoxically, these archives, as evidence that the disappeared once lived, are at the core of the protests, yet they are still overlooked by the Sri Lankan state. I explore these collections by examining the intersection of critical personal archives, life writing scholarship, and South Asian studies. The emerging field of critical personal archives suits the unique quality of archives of disappearance, their constructed nature, and their underlying intimacy. Life writing scholarship focuses a much-needed critical lens on self-representation, power, and narrative in archives, especially regarding those whose stories are marginalized and/or not deemed archivable. Drawing on semi-structured interviews I carried out with mothers of the disappeared in 2016–2017 and 2022, I analyze these archives using three life writing concepts: relationality, cultural scripts, and autotopography. The result reaffirms the enduring cultural, political, and personal value of archives of the disappeared and calls for reimagining personal archives as politically and emotionally powerful forms of representation that carve space for love and resistance.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86178287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094885ar
Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey
{"title":"Beans, Dramatic film by Tracey Deer","authors":"Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey","doi":"10.7202/1094885ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094885ar","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79304259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094884ar
J. Sassoon
{"title":"GAYE SCULTHORPE, MARIA NUGENT, and HOWARD MORPHY, eds. Ancestors, Artefacts, Empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums","authors":"J. Sassoon","doi":"10.7202/1094884ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094884ar","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89581976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094883ar
Claire Malek
{"title":"Bowline on a Bight","authors":"Claire Malek","doi":"10.7202/1094883ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094883ar","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on a case study that has at its axis myself and the records of Lilian Bland, I explore person-centred archival theory by engaging primarily with what Sara Ahmed conceptualizes as queer use. I draw on recent archival literature on love and grief, queer theory, feminist theory, anti-colonial methods, and new materialism to propose a radical somatics of critical archival love. I situate my knowledge and power within discourses of social justice, healing, liberatory memory work, and gender and sexuality to reflect on what it means to “do right”: to act ethically and with care toward ourselves and the myriad others we encounter in archival practice, and to be of use to one another.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77783244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094881ar
Natalia Bermúdez Qvortrup, Marta Lucía Giraldo
{"title":"Evidence of Jorge","authors":"Natalia Bermúdez Qvortrup, Marta Lucía Giraldo","doi":"10.7202/1094881ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094881ar","url":null,"abstract":"Jorge Soto Gallo disappeared on July 15, 1985, during a trip from Medellín to Bogotá in Colombia. Jorge is one of the thousands of disappeared people in Colombia whose families are still searching for answers, yet Jorge’s life and disappearance have been memorialized and recorded through his sister’s work of preserving, cultivating, and activating his personal archive. During recent decades, families of disappeared persons have begun to assemble folders that carry the evidence of disappearances. This article explores the personal archive of Jorge Soto Gallo with the aim of understanding a recordkeeping practice carried out by families and communities, which focuses on disappeared persons and often leads to a broad repertoire of political activism in defence of human rights. We ask, Which records are included, how are they brought together during these periods of upheaval, what do they mean, and what role do they play? We argue that creating and preserving these archives of enforced disappearance act as liberatory memory work (LMW) and as instincts of the families against forces of impunity and oblivion. We show that LMW is a living reality in Colombia that operates on a person-centred level, going beyond transitional justice frameworks, and turning victims into recordkeepers providing the possibility of historical accountability for future generations.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80195189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094875ar
Kimberly Christen, J. Pinkham, Cordelia Hooee, Amelia Wilson
{"title":"Always Coming Home","authors":"Kimberly Christen, J. Pinkham, Cordelia Hooee, Amelia Wilson","doi":"10.7202/1094875ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094875ar","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to person-centred archival praxis and methodology by providing a reparative theoretical framework based in Indigenous relationships to kin, territories, material belongings, and systems of knowledge to unsettle standard archival practices. By foregrounding the stories of Indigenous archivists and practitioners, through their own narratives, we build on Indigenous theory as story work to interrogate archival systems, workflows, and policies that continue to replay settler-colonial tactics of removal and epistemic violence. In order to restructure archival practices, we suggest that institutions need to build relationship infrastructures that allow for respectful archival listening, shared stewardship, and return practices that go beyond mere exchange. Instead, to centre Indigenous knowledge systems and practices, archival practices must not only acknowledge territorial, intellectual, and cultural sovereignty but must also enact mechanisms for their realization.","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76526543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ArchivariaPub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.7202/1094877ar
Nicola Laurent, Cate O’Neill, Kirsten Wright
{"title":"Convenient Fires and Floods and Impossible Archival Imaginaries: Describing the Missing Records of Children's Institutions","authors":"Nicola Laurent, Cate O’Neill, Kirsten Wright","doi":"10.7202/1094877ar","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7202/1094877ar","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article concerns one notable feature of narratives around child welfare records: the prevalence of stories of records destroyed in natural disasters. These stories have the power to rouse strong emotions for people who grew up in institutional \"care.\" Care Leavers, many of whom have a justifiable lack of trust in institutions and authority as a result of their childhood experiences, are skeptical about the supposed loss of their records in fires and floods. They remain suspicious that the records do exist but are being withheld to protect the reputations of the institutions. This article considers Gilliland and Caswell's notion of \"archival imaginaries\" in the context of missing, lost, or inaccessible child welfare records in Australia. The authors argue for an approach to describing these records that is not only person centred but also trauma-informed. The article presents two case studies that demonstrate the potential of applying this approach when describing records supposedly destroyed by fires and floods. Descriptions need to document the full story of the records, whether they materially exist or not, in a way that validates and acknowledges Care Leavers' strong feelings about records and demonstrates archival organizations' commitment to remediating the damage and hurt caused by past practices.résumé:Cet article concerne une caractéristique notable des récits entourant les dossiers de la protection de l'enfance : la prédominance des histoires de documents détruits à la suite de désastres naturels. Ces récits ont le pouvoir d'attiser des émotions fortes pour les personnes ayant grandi dans ces institutions de « soins ». Les personnes ayant quitté ces institutions – dont beaucoup ont un manque de confiance justifiable envers les institutions et l'autorité à la suite d'expériences vécues à l'enfance – sont sceptiques concernant la présumée perte de leurs documents à la suite de feux et d'inondations. Elles demeurent également méfiantes lorsque les documents existent bel et bien, mais quand leur accès est restreint pour protéger la réputation des institutions. Cet article utilise comme trame de fond la notion d'« imaginaires archivistiques » développée par Gilliland et Caswell dans le contexte de dossiers de protection de l'enfance en Australie qui sont disparus, perdus, ou inaccessibles. Les autrices plaident pour une approche de description de ces documents qui n'est pas uniquement centrée sur les personnes, mais également informée par les traumatismes. Cet article présente deux études de cas qui démontrent le potentiel d'application de cette approche lors de la description de documents soi-disant détruits par le feu ou lors d'inondations. Les descriptions doivent documenter l'histoire complète des archives, qu'elles existent matériellement ou non, d'une manière qui valide et reconnaît les sentiments des personnes qui ont quitté les institutions de « soins ». De plus, ces descriptions doivent démontrer l'engagement des organi","PeriodicalId":35881,"journal":{"name":"Archivaria","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78589593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}