As recently as the mid-2010’s, the debate over “discovery” in the archives turned mainstream with two articles in The Atlantic, when the widely publicized medical documents of President Lincoln invited interrogation into archival practice and use. Suzanne Fisher, then curator of technology at Henry Ford and a historian, took to the medium to challenge Helena Iles Papaioannou’s claim of discovery of the documents. Fisher, while not neglecting the significance of the papers nor their recent historic application, asserts it was “right where it was supposed to be”. Fisher goes on to center the erasure of archival labor in research and underscores the report’s phrasing of the archive as “dusty’. Quoting John Overhold, a rare books curator at Harvard, “in most cases what’s termed to be an archival ‘discovery’ was possible only because of years or decades of effort a repository invested in arranging, describing, preserving, and providing access to the materials in its care”.
Almost overnight, Papaoioannou took to The Atlantic to respond. While not disputing Fisher’s issue with archivist erasure, Papaoioannou doubles down on the claim of discovery by asserting no archivist could have such in depth knowledge of their collection. She backs up this understandable claim by elaborating on the various organizational methods that may determine if a historian or researcher knows to search for an item or not.
To a certain extent, reading between the two pieces and subsequent reflections posits discovery in the eye of the beholder. The medical papers were inarguably valuable to the “Papers of Abraham Lincoln” project Papaoioannou was working on at the time of the interaction. Their presence was undoubtedly a significant contribution to the project and while their existence in the archive was no surprise their value had increased with the project’s proximity. “Discovery” assumes the speaker’s perspective and it is not to say that some objects don’t have inherent value.
We should be asking ourselves, “Why is there such impulse to assert discovery?” Where does the drive to declare ownership of the said discovery come from? Is it valid? Is it one of many ways researchers make their work appealing to public audiences or does it reflect structural erasure of creator communities and archivist labors? We would do well to engage in inter-disciplinary about the implications of these claims and the sense of ownership that permeates discourse around the archives, particularly by those who are not working as archivists.
A long time has passed I, then a stranger on this side of the Atlantic, received so much kindness from you which I promised to return to you by compensating to you the geological and observations which I hoped to send West.”
At the time of George Engelmann’s letter to Dr. Samuel George Morton, dated July 28, 1837, the two had known each other for but five years (likely introduced by their mutual friend Thomas Nuttall). Engelmann was a respected botanist and doctor, speaking excitedly in his accent about the botanical wildlife of the American West to any who would listen. Morton was, at the time, a published author and burgeoning crania collector. Their professional friendship would span the remaining decades of Morton’s life and be immortalized in various preserved letters and 12 human skulls that reside in the Morton Crania Collection. Scanning Engelmann’s Wiki and other preliminary sources carries no mention of his contribution to one of the most notorious and revered anatomical collections. Diving into the Open Research Scan Archive (ORSA) owned and maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, however, does one stumble upon Engelmann’s contribution, as well as many others including John James Audubon, Clarence Bloomfield Moore, and Dr. Joseph Leidy.
“The original Morton collection is composed of approximately 1200 human crania (most without mandibles) and which were sent to Morton by others who collected them from both archaeological and recent contexts (1820’s to 1851),” the ORSA website reads. While some of the archival material records the circumstances under which these individuals were able to obtain human skulls, the record falls short of explaining why and how.
“But it’s not supposed to,” one might counter, correctly explaining the nature of anatomical collection and its intention. For while anatomical collections grew alongside power and inequity, one might ascertain that its proponents were not altogether interested in confronting or challenging that. The purpose of the collection was to prove the existence of separate species, according to Morton, thus any sort of context surrounding the skulls whereabouts and the collector’s presence was obsolete.
Visualizing the archival data in a new way offers an opportunity to examine the gaps in the archive. How does placing points onto a map offer ways to show relationships between data? Looking at who collected where in what country or region raises further research questions about the particular events going on in that region or city influenced collectors. It raises questions on authority and influence and suggests a whole unrecorded network of aid that made such vast collections possible. It also asks: what would an online repository of the skulls look like if it was dependent on cranial scans? What does a human centered archive look like with this material, if at all?
The vast amount of collecting largely accompanied colonial efforts. Transposing hard data to tools like Google Maps is an insightful way to show the passage of time – particularly in the naming of locations where crania were obtained. Going from “Sandwich Islands” to “Hawai’i” not only shows the temporal scale of Morton’s collection but allows us to critically engage the disruptors. Placing these individuals on a map perhaps make visceral the obvious connections between colonialism, violence, and the individual collecting that makes up so many Western anatomical collections. Viewing the plots on a map, vast as it is, allow us to gain new recognition with the individual complicity in such violence and offers us a way to look beyond the name on the collection. While it is not necessarily a final product, it is a bridge to deeper projects that allow us to visualize the collection’s context.
The dead gaze back. In museums and archives and libraries across the United States of America, visitors, students, and professionals lock eyes with human skulls gazing out of display cases or records storage. Their gaze passes over femurs and articulated metacarpals. The display of the dead has not been a standard accepted practice between institution and public, often negotiated with rage and frustration in the galleries or not, yet the display of the dead persists in many spaces across the country in the name of public education.
There is a fundamental contradiction between display intent and professional practice, however. Proponents of post-mortem collection and display argue that these human remains are vital educational components for the public. They insist upon the remains’ public value as displays in museums and learning tools in educational programs based upon this innate value. Yet, despite this significance that often is privileged over descendant community wishes, the remains are grossly underrepresented in finding aids and collections records. How is it that these remains, for all their supposed public benefit, are not subject to rigorous ethical standards and transparent record keeping?
I understand that post-mortem inquiry was a vital component of medical research and understanding. But I can also acknowledge that the theft, dissection, and display of said remains runs alongside colonial and genocidal actions that said displays perpetuate in the contemporary museum or archive.
The lack of transparency on websites, collections, and other communications between these institutions and the public is a glaring ethical omission in the humanities sector. While individual organizations and institutions often have their own statements regarding the treatment of human remains in their collections, the lack of a sweeping authoritative statement regarding their care and display has allowed post-mortem abuses to persist. One such example is the MOVE bombing victims remains in the Penn Museum, where because they were un-accessioned the maltreatment on the part of Penn anthropologists and students is technically within ethical practice according to Penn Museum standards. It begs the question, how many other human remains remain in limbo outside of descendant communities because there was no professional imperative to accession the remains? How do we hold professionals accountable when research is often viewed as worthy over the impact of the loss or, worse, ignorant?
There has been progress with the treatment of the dead and the proper care for them within NAGPRA, or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, wherein descendent communities from federally recognized tribes can reclaim remains for care. Yet Native Americans are not the only groups targeted by the violence of anatomical collection and dissection in the United States, made apparent by the recent discoveries within the Samuel George Morton Collection at the University of Pennsylvania, which earlier this year confirmed the skulls of Black Philadelphians were part of the collection.
Before all this though, there needs to be a national inquiry into the status of post-mortem remains in the United States’ museums, archives, libraries, and universities. Put simply, anatomical collections and remains related to such inquiries cannot be extracted or removed from the violent reality of American history. The unknown status of an unspecified number of remains in American museums should be a motivation for reckoning and redress.
Such a commission and inquiry would no doubt illuminate the status of post-mortem collections in the United States, painting a more coherent picture of the relationship between power and the dead, violence and display. At the very least, it is a much needed act of professionalism for the humanities sector.
The poems are enough to make one blush. Reading the correspondence between then-Senator Warren G. Harding to his mistress Carrie Phillips in the Library of Congress, one can understand the controversy behind their preservation. The Harding-Phillips correspondence, which spans the length of their relationship (1910-1924) reveals the intimate relationship the pair had, as well as shows the length of secrecy the couple had to apply in order to preserve their affair. Several stunning papers list code word after code word, a scandalous dictionary of sorts. Other pieces in the collection offer extremely intimate insight into a couple’s relationship that give the reader that quintessential feeling of intrusion. For all the reading and digging historians do, sometimes a record comes along that reminds us of the intimacy of our work, and these papers are such a collection.
So it makes sense that there was a heated and dramatic attempt to hide the evidence of this relationship. Archivist Kenneth Duckett of the Ohio Historical Society secreted the letters during a negotiation between his institution and the Harding Memorial Association wherein ownership of Harding’s papers was being determined. The intimate nature of the correspondence with Phillips and the damning evidence of an affair posed a risk to the negotiations. The existence of the letters and Duckett’s copying of the pieces outside of institutional direction resulted in a lawsuit, a court case, and the eventual closing of the records for 50 years.
Duckett’s actions have only enhanced the drama of the collection itself, raising challenging questions as to the ethical choices archivists make. Duckett, while acting in the 1960’s, did not have an outlined ethical guide to gauge his actions and protect his decisions. Looking at his behavior from contemporary Code of Ethics, it appears he acted in the best interest of the preservation of the collection, but endangered professional relationships with the donors in question and exhibited questionable professional judgement. As far as the records show Duckett, in collecting and preserving the letters outside of the professional relationship with the Harding Memorial Association, was not preoccupied with damaging Harding’s legacy, though the memorial association and family associated with Harding certainly saw the correspondence as a threat to the memory of Harding they worked hard to maintain. It is understandable to have such a reaction, where the letters came as a surprise third-party donation in the midst of negotiations. Anyone would be blindsided by the disclosure, and question the relationship between oneself and the preserving institution. While the association eventually consented to the accessibility of the documents, which you can view now on the Library of Congress, the implications of Duckett’s actions and the responsibility of the archivist to manage both donor relationships and the preservation of historical documents weigh heavy.
How should archivists go about protecting future access of potentially sensitive items while ensuring a secure transfer of power with donors? When does the right to privacy end? Would this be a different conversation if Harding wasn’t a senator at the time of his indiscretion and went on to have a public career as a politician?
Ultimately, I believe the archivist has the responsibility to push the uncomfortable conversations with donors in the process of establishing a collection within an institution. Archivists should set strong boundaries and expectations about access that can support them in their negotiations. Furthermore, archivists should be supported in broaching the sensitive discussions around privacy and legacy. Destroying evidence out of embarrassment or prioritization of a legacy should be challenged. Transparent dialogue around these potential issues will set minds at ease about donations while prioritizing future access and research utilizing such collections. Ultimately, if donors are not comfortable with an agreement, they can withhold donation or maintain their own records. There is a cost to preservation and the “immortality” of the archive, but it should be transparent for both parties to remain as ethical as possible.
Photo Credits: John Shishmanian, Associated Press, published in Will Pavia, “Tamara Lanier: ‘Harvard’s Exploiting My Enslaved Ancestors'”, The Times, 22 March 2019. Link.
A photograph is a social relationship. It’s more than a mere object, containing the context of its purpose and display, the relationship between subject and creator. They are captures of power dynamics and politics, agency and conflict. With this in mind, how do archivists navigate the power of these images? The Zealy Daguerrotypes, a collection of images showing enslaved Africans and African-Americans in the 1800’s, is a sobering example of the social and political power of photographic image.
Harvard professor Louis Agassiz commissioned daguerrotypes of enslaved persons captive on a plantation. His intent was to visually prove the inferiority of the African race by stripping the subjects and posing them to capture four sides of their upper bodies. In total, there are seven subjects staring out from the silver plated daguerrotypes, which are no larger than a human palm. Their re-emergence in the Peabody Museum Archives in the 1970’s captured the imagination and emotion of researchers and historians. To this day the images are reproduced in various peer-reviewed papers, published books, and remain publicly accessible on various internet archival resources.
Two of the subjects are now the center of a contested legal battle.
For Tamara Lanier, it began as a genealogical quest to discover her ancestors. Her journey weaving together family stories and history took her to the Peabody Museum in Harvard University, where she laid eyes on two ancestors. Renty and Delia, two of the subjects in the Zealy Daguerrotype collection, are her relatives. The emotion and experience of finding her relatives, whose stories she had heard repeatedly in her childhood, was soured by the violence of the images where they remain frozen.
Considering the social context of these daguerrotypes, they are inherently violent. Enslaved persons, stripped and photographed like objects, to serve the racist and White supremacist end of the Harvard professor, the daguerrotypes replicate the dehumanized gaze of the creator.
Lanier instantly thought they were “out of place” in the Harvard Archives. They belonged with her. In her mind, “the daguerrotypes are not property that can be owned but ancestors who need caretaking”, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay writes. They are her relatives – shouldn’t they be reunited with their descendants? Furthermore, there is the issue of compensation. The Zealy Daguerrotypes have been utilized in publications and events since the 1970’s, so Lanier claimed that in a sense her relatives were still exploited by the university.
The lawsuit placed in 2019 was dismissed in 2021. While the court did not deny Lanier’s relationship to Delia and Renty, they declared that Harvard had a legal right to keep the daguerrotypes based on the significance of the collection and the fact Agassiz commissioned them under Harvard oversight.
This in itself is a shade of the violence present in the daguerrotypes themselves. Prioritizing the racist ideals of a White supremacist, the court and Harvard University prioritize violence. Latria Graham puts it: “the rediscovery of the daguerrotypes and their use in revenue-generating materials in the present day have helped surface an ethical issue that has long accompanied Black people’s bodies: their presentation and exploitation still, in many cases, outweigh individual ownership and autonomy”. The court’s decision and Harvard’s repeated dismissal of Lanier go to this point as well. Harvard’s decision and the court’s support reinforce the dehumanization of slavery and the context of the daguerrotypes themselves, Renty and Delia are not humans with agency but objects in the eyes of the law. Furthermore, proven genealogical relation to the subjects does not protect descendants.
It raises a larger question: when does scholarship become violence?
A second question: do archives have a right to hold items related to violence and violent acts if it goes against descendant or community wishes?
The Peabody Museum carries some disclaimers on their publicly accessible site, explaining that past languages and practices are “no longer acceptable”. However, the Zealy daguerrotypes remain publicly accessible on the Peabody website and affiliated archival resources like ArtStor.
The Peabody offers some information about the historical significance of the daguerrotypes here which emphasize the historic value of the images and their creation context. But the context in question is not elaborated on, nor is there space to prepare viewers to such images and re-establish the humanity of the subjects in question.
Lanier continues to pursue legal rights in the Massachusetts court system. She continues to elevate the humanity of her ancestors while fighting for financial compensation of the various publications that have centered Delia and Renty. If the courts side with her, Renty, and Delia, which I unabashedly hope they do, it will set a legal precedent for others to reclaim family members and individual history.
Lanier is not alone.
In Philadelphia, community organizer Abdul-Aily Muhammad and others have spent years demanding reparations from the University of Pennsylvania, where skulls taken from Black Philadelphians and enslaved Africans were on display until 2020 and remain digitally accessible in an online archive. The remains are part of the Morton Collection, a vast assemblage of some 1000 skulls that were collected to prove the physical and mental differences between race. Morton’s findings and collection has thus been utilized to sustain White supremacist notions of superiority in later scholarship. While the skulls have since been taken off of public display in the museum and university classrooms, their digitized images remain accessible as well as their use in online videos and classes. Public pressure and the work of activists like Muhammad have forced the museum to announce repatriation, though what that will look like is still up in the air.
The Morton Collection and the Zealy Daguerrotypes are thus two examples of the ways White supremacy cultivated collections that continue to benefit from “historic significance” yet cause continued harm to descendant communities. Thus the universities, courts, historians, and archivists who continue to prioritize this continued violence over community wishes are complicit in continued and sustained violence. The Zealy Daguerrotypes and Morton Collection are not alone, there are many collections across the country that continue to sustain violence. Moving away from this practice and centering descendant needs will thus require archivists and historians to question and challenge many of the innate entitlements of their disciplines. First and foremost privileging historic significance in a field where so many of these decisions on ethics and protection are made by individual professionals demands some scrutiny and critique. If archivists are committed to protecting collections, who will protect the subjects in historic photographs?
Lanier is one such protector, advocating for the humanity of her ancestors in a way the university does not acknowledge. As we await a new date for her next hearing, we need to make noise about the ongoing violence by the university and challenge assumptions about ownership and access in our own institutions. We need to examine our seemingly innate rights to information and images as historians. White archivists and historians especially need to confront the White supremacy at work in our discipline.
For the most recent news and writings, please read her Twitter. You can read her historic lawsuit here. Take action with the Harvard Coalition to Free Renty here. Sign the petition here.
To support the work of Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, please visit here.
Memorial plaques adorn brick roads through the historic Roman ghetto in commemoration of the 1943 deportation. Photo credit: Wanted in Rome, October 16, 2019.
“The church is not afraid of history,” Pope Francis intoned in 2019 on his decision to prematurely open the closed Pope Pius XII papers in the Vatican archive. The archives, which are shrouded in mystery and lore carry some 350,000 volumes spanning 53 miles, carrying everything from King Henry VIII’s marriage annulment to Galileo’s heresy trial transcripts. Public curiosity into the Holy See’s archival holdings originates out of fascination and curiosity over the powerful state, which has the capacity to outrage as much as it does entrance. The Pope Pius XII papers, an archival holding detailing the controversial and pained leadership over the Second World War, are one such repository. Pope Pius XII carries two legacies: getting the Vatican and Catholic Church through WWII and for remaining neutral throughout the 1943 Deportation of the Roman Jews. Pope Francis put it this way, the papacy was “marked by moments of grave difficulties, tormented decisions of human and Christian prudence, that to some would appear as reticence” (BBC).
The “reticence” in question, debated by scholars and artists since the 1960s, concerns the Third Reich’s raid on the Jewish ghetto in Rome. In total 1,259 men, women, and children were detained by the state and deported to various death and concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe. Only 16 would survive, the last of whom passed in 2019 (New York Times).
Pope Pius XII, who had been supporting the network of Catholics housing Jewish refugees across Europe, remained quiet on the matter of Catholic complicity in the Holocaust. When the United States reached out in the early years for confirmation of the genocide, the Holy See was absolute in their neutrality, vague in disregarding the reports of targeted massacre. The damning event is the Nazi occupation of Rome and the deportation of the Jewish population where scholars are united in that Pope Pius XII had knowledge of the Nazi intentions toward the population and, as a political actor as well as religious leader, had insight many civilians would not be privy to.
While scholars and the public have debated Pope Pius’s actions, and his legacy, central documents related to his rule have remained locked until Pope Francis’s decree in 2020. The secrecy surrounding the papers, made all the more mysterious and insidious within broader public scrutiny over the Vatican Archives, has cultivated the sense that this opening will in fact hold the key to demystifying the Vatican’s relationship to the Holocaust. Scholars, however, suggest that the core documents related to this time period have been available and interpreted. This does not stop public and scholarly fascination with the opening of “secret” collections, evident in the news and programming surrounding Pope Francis’s decision.
Screenshot taken by author.
The papers consumption was significantly delayed by Covid, meaning that over the next couple years the early “findings” of the collection will erupt or trickle into scholarly debate. The finding aids, written in French, offer some thousands of pages detailing the scope of the collection. Accessibility is limited, given the nature of the collection and the state of the holding website. One can surmise there is significant interest in the collection, putting demands on archivists’ resources and the engagement with the papers. Furthermore, the Vatican Archives are famous for an intense vetting process for interested researchers seeking to utilize the papers. Many researchers are forced to secure engagement in person, requiring resources to travel to Vatican City. Such a move, opening the Pius XII papers, will have limited impact as accessibility remains limited and privileged.
What is clear is the impact of these archives on legacy. Pope Pius XII is in the early stages of canonization, the Catholic procedure of establishing sainthood which would cultivate a thick armor of infallibility. The decision to open the archives ahead of the intended date by Pope Francis acknowledges the power of archival silences and study on contemporary life. Perhaps it is an invitation to disrupt sainthood for Pope Pius XII, a nod to the apologetic establishment despite the very violent consequences of political “neutrality”, or perhaps it is a way to offer transparency ahead of canonization. Archives, and the documents they hold, have political power decades after an event or individual. Such an act by the Holy See acknowledges the public’s interest in transparency and the power of archival documents but stops short of restitution for survivors and descendants. It is a fraction of the political power of the holding institution, but it is useful for us to scrutinize how institutions handle and engage discourse about their holdings.
As an anthropologist and public historian used to interpreting the past with contemporary audiences, I often imagine what future visitors to our ruins will think about our society. There’s a relationship between value and preservation, intentional or otherwise, that is evident in great structures designed to outlive a culture or the personal mementos saved by a thoughtful secreting in house walls or buried boxes. Just as museums and archives are designed to celebrate and congregate around our cultures, they are also designed with the anticipation of absence in mind.
It’s not a choice rooted in nihilism, but rather a fact of the inevitability of decline and decay. Those working in archives are acutely aware of the everyday decisions that will affect the material’s survival and the ways crises and emergencies can threaten records of the past. So how are institutions reacting to the climate crisis?
As environmental damage becomes exceedingly more challenging to ignore, institutions like the Getty Museum in California are responding directly to impending damage and threats. The Getty, like other institutions, was designed with potential catastrophe in mind. The museum, which houses European paintings and a renowned international photography collection, boasts fire resistant materials and indoor suppression systems within a fire-resistant grounds that not only serves to protect the art and records within the museum, but fostered a safe space for firefighters battling the Getty Blaze in 2019 to rest and regroup. The Getty is not alone in investing in preventative measures related to their local challenges and their recent efforts to amplify protection in the face of impending climate damages speaks to the larger issues facing archival science in the midst of a climate crisis.
While the climate crisis is not a surprise or shock, it is offering unforeseen obstacles to every single person around the globe, archivists not excluded. Some are responding to these challenges directly. They argue that the sage advice surrounding crises and emergencies in the archives must be reexamined in the wake of our new reality and that archivists must engage in more rigorous and empathy-driven community engagement to preserve accurate and holistic representations of our culture. Faced with the annihilation of a way of life, archivists are some of the most dedicated voices pushing for adapting to this reality. But what if they were as committed to righting the ship and undoing the harm?
Such an idea is tied up in the broader questions of: “How will we remember?” and “Who will be there to remember?”, emphasizing the political role archivists and the Archive can take. The violence of the Archive as many of us know it has a chance to be challenged as we respond to the new and dramatic reality we live in. It will take naming the silences and manufactured absences within our institutions and archivists directly committed to resisting climate change. It will require archivists taking a stand against their own institutions – standing with activists to call for a divestment from fossil fuels and pipelines that so many elite institutions support. It will take archivists investing in communities most impacted by climate change like the Quileute in Washington.
As archivists face climate change with the rest of the world, they will be forced to examine their political power in who they serve and how. While the crises will certainly impact us all, it will not be equal or equitable in its ferocity. So too will the preservation of various communities and collections be challenged differently, reflecting societal value and bias. Often we imagine archivists as preserving the past, but they really have the unique capacity to create the future. Now is the time to utilize that power and privilege to best serve communities in the path of climate crises and disaster and to challenge apathy and financial neglect within our institutions towards these dangers.
The “archive” enjoys a sort of god-tier status within the history discipline. As an anthropologist, archives were useful but never our exhaustive source of primary or secondary materials. Formal archival research was often squeezed in between field site visits and interviews. Dialogue with the archivist or archive staff was often as enlightening as the sparse pieces of information gleaned from the miles of text and images pulled for our questions. With my research objective primarily centered in the present, though undoubtedly employing vast historical analysis,
I was surprised, then, when I entered a graduate history program in the first year of Covid-19 and witnessed the weekly reminiscence for the archive. At a certain point, I wondered if I had even really been in one given my colleague’s longing for long reading tables and boxes of documents. I questioned the definition of the archive and marveled at its constant naming, while much of our discussions were rarely based on primary documents but rather other people’s interpretation of them.
Historians seem to fetishize the archive given its proximity to an authentic past. The reliance on an “organic” organizational method and a relatively stubborn embrace of analog practices that accompanies a relative lukewarm embrace of digital resources (evident in the lack of financial prioritization of digitizing collections and enhancing accessibility).
The archive is simply not immune from the political implications and realities of the hosting institution, so too are the people in charge of managing its resources. Now what of the way researchers engage with the archive in question? What do the political realities of archivists and the university mean for the researcher’s initiative, access, and experience?
Archives are not necessarily unique in that they serve research interests of people inside and outside the hosting institution in question, but fascinating in the way decades of theoretical writing and navel gazing have fostered dialogue surrounding the very practical and intimate encounters between researcher and primary sources. The root of the encounter is very basic, if host to complicated impact and preparation, yet the brush with the “authentic” and the nostalgia of analog history makes these moments magical to many.
The thrill of “discovery”, if anything can really be “discovered” in a meticulously managed archive, is certainly a component of enjoyment for researchers within History and outside. But here History could benefit from adjacent disciplines, like Anthropology, in adopting Identity Positioning theory to better complicate their own relationship with the archive and that intimate encounter between historian and the political machine. Identity Positioning emerged in Anthropology in the 1980s, as the field expanded to include Feminist Anthropology and Post-Colonial theory. It is now an embedded and essential part of anthropology, where the researcher is required to be transparent in their intentions and methods as well as define themselves within the political web they are working within. The result is not only a transparent record of the research method and experience, but an opportunity for better interdisciplinary dialogue wherein researchers can articulate implications and impacts of the research. Particularly in spaces like formal archives, where access is often restricted temporally and financially, historian positioning can invite not only more ethical analysis but reveal insight as to the historians’ relationship with the cult of the archive and their research methods.
This is especially pertinent in the discipline’s turn towards social history and other sub-disciplines that prioritize extra-institutional archives or de-emphasize archival contributions altogether. While it is all well to challenge archival assumptions and management, it is important to emphasize that these actions (much like a written document within a larger archive) are not formed independent of researcher need and intention. Critiquing our archival assumptions and challenging archivists to view themselves as political actors is half of a larger problem within the discipline of history.
The idea of an objective, organic archive is dangerous not least because of its erasure of archivist labor, but in its inability to be questioned or challenged. While the archive is undoubtedly a significant resource for historians, as well as other researchers, the power of the encounter should invite greater ethical positioning on the researcher’s side as much as it should trigger inspiration.
Scholarship surrounding archives have increasingly turned toward the human reality of these spaces. Preoccupation with records and materials later turned toward interrogation over the reality of this organizational work on the archivist themselves. Early writings that argued for ambitious and, as we soon discover, excessive standards now read as naïve and optimistic. Later writings challenge these assumptions of priorities by raising the demands of stakeholders, institutional perspectives on their own archives, and the influence of users. What was viewed as a neutral and passive collection in the mid-20th century is now a space of meta-critique, introspection, and philosophical musings.
The archive is thus shaped and informed by people. This feels like a no-brainer, obviously these physical repositories of papers, letters, objects, and documentation are staffed and organized by human beings. Yet in the earlier literature, with its emphasis on order and structure and institutional design, one would be hard pressed to locate those people. This language surrounding archives, coupled with mission-based collecting and organization, has produced a largely passive tone surrounding archives. In this way, archival objects and documents become humanized, exercising agency within fonds and by their date of creation. The humans become mere supporters of these objects, which are significant based on their entry into the archive alone. The passive voice around archives not only amplifies the location of archives in our culture, much like how architecture underscores value and community, but restricts our capacity to challenge the value of these spaces. The documents become self-actualized, their organization infallible, and we as lowly researchers and archivists are at the behest of some larger influence. This of course is not the case.
The contemporary turn toward reading archival spaces in acknowledging the human limits and impact on their form and intention also opens the door for greater interrogation into the ethical impact of human control. If individual archivists have such potential, and documented, impact on records and the public’s access to such documents, what do archivists’ bias and beliefs influence these spaces? How does racism and misogyny affect archival holdings and access? For while there are real violent underpinnings of the institutional archive, in relation to its proximity and support of structurally violent institutions, the real impact of individual archivists must be called into question, particularly around unethical practice and procedures.
Archivists are some of the most political actors in our society. They not only have the capacity to influence preservation and destruction, but to enable others. The assumption of passivity, at the whim of the archive, is no more than a myth. There are no neutral archives and there are no neutral archivists. So it begs the question: how do we hold archivists accountable? How do we measure an archive’s impact beyond institutional need?
While much of the scholarship surrounding archives has gone on to debunk the idea of a universal organizational system, with scholars rightly positing that the individual and unique demands of objects and stakeholders demands flexibility in the face of uncertainty, there seems to be a need for an overlapping ethical review for the individuals engaged in shaping archival spaces and silences. While codes of conduct do exist, recent scholarship points to more collaborative ways of holding accountability by engaging with users and recognizing the impact researchers have on collections.
Expanding the impact on archives from archivists to stakeholders to researchers certainly complicates these spaces, but it challenges the humanized archive that opens the door for naming injustices and remedying violences wherein archives have been complicit. Archivists are no stranger to weaving connections and patterns between seemingly disparate items and documents, so they have a vital role to play in transforming access and communities they serve.
At the least, archivists and people who use archives can do their due diligence to challenge assumptions about the archive itself. Archivists are real, flawed people who have acknowledge impact on collection spaces and access. Resisting the need to humanize the archive allows us to confront archivist complicity in larger systemic harm and name ways forward into more equitable spaces. Archives cannot be separated from the communities they inhabit, but can we say they truly benefit them? If they will, archivists will play a role in shaping that future.
Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing”, The American Archivist, 68 (2005), 208-263
The flames flicker across my smartphone, illuminating the darkness of my bedroom in a familiar, scented light. Fire. It’s late at night during the American “departure” from Afghanistan and I am doomscrolling Twitter until I come across the video flickering and crackling like so many summer bonfires.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh tweeting to the world.
The fire in question was far from the cheerful associations of s’mores and summer barbecues. It contained the records of female student records from the School of Leadership Afghanistan, the only female boarding school in the country. It’s founder, Shabana Basij-Rasikh captured the moment she prioritized the safety of the female students as the Taliban encroached on the city’s borders: the records would be used (as they had in the past) to target educated women and girls. Basij-Rasikh’s tweets, elaborating on the intention behind not only sharing the images but also the act of burning the records, spurred discourse about the ethics of archives.
The average sentiment shared with Basij-Rasikh’s video and Twitter thread was that of compassion and heartbreak. Many shared the images with heartbreak emojis, expressing solidarity with the people of Afghanistan now openly targeted by the Taliban. Some expressed outrage at the destruction of records.
This encounter on the internet centers the potential abuse and use of archival resources that archivists must contend with and act against. Eira Tansey writes “archivists have an ethical obligation to understand that respecting people’s privacy and right to forget their own past means accepting that we will lose parts of the historical record that others may wish we had gone to great lengths to get”.1 She could well have been writing about Basij-Rasikh’s decision to burn her student’s records – the moment where archival resources and human lives intersect and have the potential to impact lives and security.
The root of Tansey’s quote, which have massive implications for the work of contemporary collecting and reckoning with the colonial and White supremacist violence of the Archive, are found in the issue of agency. Agency emerges in the postmodern historiography as a way to democratize narrative while questioning assumptions of narrative that White and male centered dialogue restricted. Agency is a way to acknowledge the ways that actions are contextualized within varying arcs of power and influence, that individuals are inhibited and emboldened by structural violence and opportunity, and that individual narrative and marginalized narratives persist in spite of institutional silences.
This comes up with matters related to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and in contemporary debates surrounding the MOVE remains held in the University of Pennsylvania Museum without familial consent. These issues, charged with the added emotion that comes along with human remains, can be extended to funerary objects, colonial loot, and works of art taken out of conflict. Ultimately these people and objects, like the actions of the people who care for them, cannot be de-extrapolated from the structural realities that impact their trajectories.
Who ultimately has agency in the Archive? Who doesn’t that probably should?
Mark A. Greene in his chapter “The Messy Business of Remembering: History, Memory, and Archives” attempts to disentangle these ambiguous questions by interrogating the realms of history and memory. He argues that archivists straddle the “blurry” line between history and memory, but does not go far enough to interrogate his assumptions about “memory” itself. While memory, as he argues, involves human actors, Greene does not engage how memory is typically associated with non-dominant historical narratives and carries colonial and racist implications. Institutional archives are not history because history is somehow more objective, they shape an institutional memory that archivists are complicit in shaping as much as the institution. History and memory are certainly blurry distinctions, but unnecessary dividers when discussing archival practice. Such a binary reinforces credentials and authority within the archive that perpetuate colonial and racist violence. Such binaries restrict marginalized communities from engaging their histories and memory without resistance or obstacles.
For all the critiques of the archive and the musings on their limitations, I wonder what it means to confront the necessity of such a space. Why are archival practices favored over indigenous record keeping and oral histories? What does it mean to prioritize one over the other while seemingly operating in a postmodern perspective? How do institutional archives have the capacity to harm living individuals? Who has the say when records are tossed or destroyed?
It ultimately comes back to question: “Who are archives for?”
As I write this, an disillusioned and angry graduate student during a time when nearly 4.5 million people have died from Covid-19 and so many continue as if nothing has happened, I think of those institutions collecting without offering vaccine assistance. What does it mean to ask for a quarantine journal, but be unwilling to hold documents and pictures for families enduring unstable housing? What does it mean for a museum archive to collect protest signs and photograph the resistance against police brutality if they are unable to speak out against it within their institution? I worry as we fetishize the archive and personify documents, we run the risk of dehumanizing the individuals involved in the creation of the pieces and the people directly impacted by it, particularly in archives that deal with violence. Interrogating this question of who the archive is for is one way I hope to actively engage many of my doubts and fears of the Archive and to articulate better the ways we can remedy past wrongs and invest in collective memory in democratic ways.
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