Andrew Flinn & Mary Steven’s ‘It is noh mistri…’

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Jul 25

Andrew Flinn & Mary Stevens (2009) “‘It is noh mistri, wi mekin histri’. Telling Our Own Story: Independent and Community Archives in the UK, Challenging and Subverting the Mainstream,” Jeanette A. Bastian & Ben Alexander, eds., Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London, UK: Facet Publishing: pp. 3-27.

“…the act of recovering, telling and then preserving one’s own history is not merely one of intellectual vanity; nor can it be dismissed—as some still seek to do—as a mildly diverting leisure activity with some socially desirable outcomes. Instead the endeavour by individuals and social groups to document their history, particularly if that history has been generally subordinated or marginalized, is political and subversive. These ‘recast’ histories and their making challenge and seek to undermine both the distortions and omissions of orthodox historical narratives, as well as the archive and heritage collections that sustain them.” (3-4)

 

Andrew Flinn and Mary Stevens (2009) describe independent community archives as social movements, formed within social, intellectual, and political contexts. They define these archives as the (often) grassroots activities of creating and collecting, processing and curating, preserving and making accessible collections relating to a particular community or specified subject. “The moment when an archives is created and named as such is a moment of reflection and often a response to other societal conditions.” (p.8) They also note that in practice, there is much overlap between community archives and community-based exhibitions and/or museums. Independent community archives do not make a distinction between library, archives and museum functions; they are convergent spaces concerned with collecting for their community based on the principle of pertinence. Flinn and Stevens propose that most independent community archives exist without institutional or government support, which can result in significant struggles to retain facilities to house collections and funding to support archival activities. Instead, these initiatives rely on champions who will work diligently to collect and preserve material that is central to their social, intellectual, and/or political aspirations. Additional volunteers provide subject expertise and help describe information. On rare occasions, a paid staff member will work with volunteers to ensure collections are catalogued and described, facilities are maintained, and tend to any other archival activities that arise.

According to Flinn and Stevens, a survey of independent community archives in the UK revealed two commonalities to most (but not all) of these initiatives. First, employing concepts articulated by cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1), independent community archives are ‘constituted’ because their founders see a real or perceived failure on the part of mainstream heritage institutions (e.g., museums, universities, libraries) to collect, preserve, and make available collections that accurately represent the experiences of community members. Community archivists might consider themselves activists or “rescuer-historians” (3), collecting material that helps them corroborate the stories they want to tell. These stories can be counter-hegemonic narratives that challenge persistent public perceptions, but they can also be used to inform others who seek knowledge about the community within which they are constructed. In this sense, counter-narratives can offer opportunities for redress. Flinn and Stevens draw on the work of museologist Elizabeth Crooke, who has emphasized the importance of counter-narratives and alternative heritage for “binding and sustaining social movement” (p.7). The construction of alternative or counter-hegemonic histories can help “springboard” further political action. Perhaps for this reason, community archivists display an ‘eye for the future’, and are conscious of the value of the records they create and/or collect. Flinn and Stevens explain, “It is this close identification between the production of history, education and political struggle that leads to an understanding of independent community archives as, or at least part of, new social movements.” (p.7).

The second commonality among independent community archives is the value that they place on autonomous governance. It is for this reason that Flinn and Stevens have suggested that it is more accurate to use the qualified form ‘independent community archives’ rather than the more commonly used ‘community archives’. While some community archivists are interested in building partnerships with other heritage organizations, they generally maintain a strong sense of independence. Past experiences of exclusion and/or censorship by mainstream institutions has made community archivists cautious about forging relationships that would limit their ability to make decisions about their own collections and how they are used. Flinn and Stevens recognize, however, that most champions and volunteers are not able to sustain archival aspirations long-term and the autonomy of independent community archives may be threatened over time as archival aspirations wane. It is this second commonality that raises several concerns that serves as a jumping off points for my own research into partnership building between LGBT archives and other heritage bodies. This is also the situation explored further in another article by Flinn and Stevens (with Elizabeth Shepherd), published in the Journal of Heritage Studies (3).

Flinn and Stevens go on to discuss the role of independent community archives as valuable tools in the democratization of heritage. They note that the growth of these initiatives throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and the continued support for community-based collections is premised on the assumptions that heritage projects can “deliver a strong sense of belonging or identity”, and that such “feelings or identities are socially productive” (p.19). They write, “Community archives arguably can help generate this security (and thereby empower people) by enhancing individuals’ awareness of their social location (in Hall’s terms ‘the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past’” (p.20). At the same time, the authors caution against the assumption that strong identity is always a useful construction for marginalized people. While strong ethnic identities, for example, can create a sense of shared heritage and belonging for members, they might also create a distance line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I would argue that some LGBT archives also risk the reification of particular modes of gay and lesbian identities while excluding records that document other ways in which sexuality can be expressed (e.g., bisexuality, queer sexualities). Flinn and Stevens recognize that there needs to be more scholarship that investigates the concept of collective identity and parses out the benefits and dangers of group identification, particularly in archival literature that has typically eschewed the virtues of heritage construction, but has not developed a rich understanding of ‘community’ or ‘collectivity’.

As a relatively new scholar embarking on research that investigates the role of LGBT community archives, I am grateful for Flinn and Steven’s work to survey UK independent community archives. This book chapter is one outcome of AHRC-funded Community Archives and Identities project that was undertaken at University College London during 2008-09. The research team, which included Andrew Flinn (co-PI), Elizabeth Shepherd (co-PI) and Mary Stevens (Research Associate), conducted a series of in-depth studies of Black and minority ethnic community archives in the United Kingdom. The team produced a research blog that is still available at http://archivesandidentities.wordpress.com/. The final report of the project is available through the ICARUS portal at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/icarus/community-archives/. (btw I am including the full URL in the body of my text to assist with screen-reading technology for those with visual impairment. You should do the same in your online writing!). What is so interesting about this project is that represents a watershed moment in academic research on community-based and community-led archival initiatives. Although museum studies literature is replete with stories about community engagement and community-based heritage work, the archival field has only recently taken note of the potential of community-based archives. The team describes a community archives as “any collection of material that documents one or many aspects of a community’s heritage, collected in, by and for that community and looked after by its members” (http://archivesandidentities.wordpress.com/about-2/). The project looked at the social impact of these community archives and their potential benefits by engaging in a community-based participatory (CBP) model that placed Stevens directly into the work that the partnering archives undertake. As a result, the literature that has been published based on the findings of this project is rich and promotes collaboration between academic researchers and community-based partnerships. The combination of CBP research and community archives is more exciting to me than chocolate and peanut butter (yes, I’m a GIANT nerd).

There is one question that I still have in my head for which this article provides few answers: what about resource centers—are they community archives? What if the ‘community archives’ was not constituted as an archives per sé, but as a resource center that brings together material (or virtual) materials of interest or importance to the community? In the case of a resource centre, is there the same level of attention paid to preservation of evidence as an archives would make? And, if preservation of evidence is not the main goal, is this still an archives? I’m thinking about the Union of BC Indian Chiefs resource centre, which is considered by Pell & Moore (2010) to be an ‘autonomous archives’ (4), but was, in fact, constituted as a place that brings together information about the indigenous communities with regard to land claims. Is this still a community archives? More on autonomous archives and Pell & Moore to be posted shortly.

And don’t even get me started on what Flinn & Stevens mean by ‘community’….

(1) See Hall, Stuart (2001) “Constituting an Archive,” Third Text, 15(54): 89-92.

(2) See Terry Eastwood (1993) “Reflections on the Development of Archives in Canada and Australia.” In Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping, Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, eds. Melbourne: Ancora Press, pp. 27-39. Eastwood suggests that the rescuer role of archivists is often the first stage in setting up archives. This is followed by work to establish authority and finally, extend and strengthen this authority.

(3) See Mary Stevens, Andrew Flinn and Elizabeth Shepherd (2010) “New Frameworks for Community Engagement in the Archive Sector: From Handing Over to Handing On,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(1–2): 59–76.

(4) See Shauna Moore and Susan Pell (2010) “Autonomous Archives,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(4): 255-268.

 

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Introducing mal d’archives

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Jun 25

This is my new blog about people and archives. I’ll be posting my lit reviews here. Read on for juicy reviews of archival literature. Oh yes. Juicy.

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Eric Ketelaar’s “Sharing”

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Jun 25

Eric Ketelaar (2005). “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records,” Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 33: 44-61.

Since I am on a Ketelaar kick, I thought it appropriate to add my comments about another Ketelaar article that tickles my fancy. Published in 2005, “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records” builds on both Jeannette Bastian’s work in the US Virgin Islands and Frank Upward’s (and Sue McKemmish’s) conceptualization of the records continuum. Ketelaar asks, can we use the concepts of a ‘community of records’ and ‘joint heritage’ to craft a fourth dimension of the records continuum, which he calls the memory continuum. The article then walks through the ways in which memory can be constructed and how these constructions intersect with archivistics.

I think its necessary to take pause and reflect on the term ‘archivistsics’ as it appears in much of Ketelaar’s writing (and in his teaching). In a 2000 article published in The American Archivist (1), Ketelaar defined archivistsics as equivalent to the Dutch archivistiek, the German Archivistik, the French archivistique, the Italian and Spanish archivistica. He cautions that this definition is not the same as ‘archival science’. As Ketelaar has explained, the traditional approach of archival science is that the work of archivists begins once records enter the archival repository (at the end of their life cycle). The records continuum however, removes the distinction of records in use and records in their archival (dead) state. After all, records are used in their archival phase. The records continuum also allows archivists to intervene in the creation stage of records to ensure their reliability and authenticity over time and space. This requires knowledge of the activities that give rise to the creation of records with evidential properties. Archivists must be able to indicate which artefacts are, in fact, records. Following this, archivistics focuses on the context, structure and form of records as they are determined by the social or work processes (actions) that created them. Archivistics is concerned with how societies create and maintain records and archives, and the study of archivistics aims to build better archival frameworks that respond to the ways in which records creators create, use and organize their records. Unlike archival science, archivistics takes into account the social and cultural contexts of recordkeeping activities and not only their organization and meaning after they have been deposited at an archival repository for long-term preservation. (At least, this is how Ketelaar distinguishes the two approaches. I’m not convinced that archival science lacks a capacity to include recordkeeping context)

Ketelaar begins this article with a description of collective memories and social frameworks of memory. Over the past decade, he argues, archival science has responded to a boom in literature on the concept of social (or cultural) memory, but has yet failed to develop a refined sense of what memory means in the archival context. Archival theorists have also struggled to build consensus on the role of archives and records in mediating individual memory and, what Maurice Halbwachs has called, collective memories shared among all members of a social group. Ketelaar believes that archives can serve as touchstones for the construction of memory, both autobiographical and collective, but the records can not stand on their own. In fact, Ketelaar is clear that he believes that records, or ‘memory texts’, can have multiple and changing meaning over time and across space as they are read and reread by their users. Records do not tell stories; people tell stories and corroborate these using archival records. (I very much agree, and it is a pet peeve of mine when people talk about archival records that ‘speak to them’. Dude, if a record is talking to you, there are bigger concerns that you should be addressing. But I digress… ) Following this same logic, Ketelaar argues that there is no singular collective memory, but rather multiple collective memories that coexist and change over time. Even if memories are shared across social groups, each member of this group will remember these collective memories through a unique lens.

The emphasis of the article, however, is not to address the role of archives or archivists in the construction of collective memory. Ketelaar’s main goal is to investigate “the possibility of mapping a ‘memory continuum’ onto the records continuum, in which memories of the individual, the family, the organization, the community and society function, not in isolation, but in a flow of continuous interaction” (p.46). Individual memory, for example, is fleeting if not supported by some kind of interaction with other people or with ‘memory texts’ (of which archival records are only one possible type).

Ketelaar points to the work of Annette Kuhn to suggest that it is difficult to distinguish a line between individual (or autobiographical) memory and the collective memories of our social groups, as it is these social contexts that help shape our sense of self and the ways in which we remember (this is not a profound statement; Freud took a ride on this individual-social memory train decades ago). Ketelaar also suggests that the family provides a primary social framework for autobiographical memory and much of what we remember is embedded within kinship patterns. Family memory, in turn, is influenced by regional and national memories, as well as religious affiliations, ethnic backgrounds, and additional group affiliations. Although Ketelaar does not specifically address issues of gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality, one would presume that these aspects of identity would also shape autobiographical memory. (He does mention that women are often considered memory-keepers, but does not offer any further discussion). Thus, there is no clear demarcation between individual and collective memories. Autobiographical memories are contingent upon the social status and ‘place’ of the individual remembering.

Ketelaar notes that the organization is another dimension of the memory continuum and goes on to suggest that the ways in which people communicate and document experiences are impacted by the structure of the organizations to which they belong. For example, members of parliament would create records in a particular way that differs from recordkeeping cultures in banks or legal firms. Even within these organizations recordkeeping can take different forms; the human resources department does not communicate with the same language as the IT department. When taken together, the three dimensions of Ketelaar’s memory continuum—the individual, the family and the organization—provide the backdrop for the study of archivistics.

As with much of Ketelaar’s writing, he draws again from Jeannette Bastian’s work on ‘communities of records’ and his own interpretation of the ICA’s concept of ‘joint heritage’. He also notes Tom Nesmith’s concept of societal provenance to suggest that there are also social and intellectual concepts that shape the actions of the people and institutions that create and maintain records.

What is missing from this paper, however, is a clear understanding of how a memory continuum might be visualized (and operationalized) in future archivistic research. Although Frank Upward’s work on the records continuum does not always translate easily to his visual representations, at least the reader is able to ‘see’ what Upward is thinking. Would autobiographical memory be placed at the epicenter, with family, organizational, and collective or social memory represented as rings around it? Would there be quadrants of memory construction, as Upward has done with his Cultural Heritage Continuum model (CHCm) (2) Visualization is useful and has helped researchers test models in real situation. Leisa Gibbons, for example, has written a case study of YouTube user-generated cultural heritage and overlaid her findings on the CHCm to test its capacity to anticipate heritage creation (3). It’s not clear how Ketelaar would think about testing his memory continuum model or how it might contribute to other continuum models in Upwards oeuvre.

(1) Eric Ketelaar (2000) “Archivistics Research Saving the Profession,” The American Archivist, vol. 65: 322-340.

(2) Frank Upward (2005) “Continuum Mechanics and Memory Banks: (2) The Making of Culture”, Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 33, no. 2: 18-51. See page 21 for a visualization of the Cultural Heritage Continuum model.

(3) Leisa Gibbons (2010) “Testing the continuum: user-generated cultural heritage on YouTube,” Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 37, no. 2: 90-113.

 

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McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar’s “Communities of Memory”

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Jun 23

Sue McKemmish, Anne Gilliland-Swetland & Eric Ketelaar (2005) “‘Communities of Memory’: Pluralising Archival Research and Education Agendas” Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 33, no. 1: 146-174.

Building on previous research projects in the areas of indigenous record-keeping, arrangement & description, and archival education, authors McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar argue that human societies exist in particular archival paradigms. Not only do individuals and groups make and keep records to documents their experiences, but the archival imperative itself is shaped by cultural norms and traditions. This push-pull relationship, in turn, impacts notions of reliability, authenticity and trustworthiness. Recent emphasis on standardization and metadata schemas, however, has failed to recognize the variety of ways in which different societies create and engage with archives as cultural phenomena. In addition, globalism has encouraged trans-cultural communication and intercultural cooperation, but has threatened the capacity of individual communities to maintain their unique patterns of collection, preservation and making available records of evidential value. The authors urge archivists to consider how archival frameworks intersect with societal processes and acknowledge the politics of archives within each archival paradigm.

This call to contemplate pluralism in, what Ketelaar has called, the archivalization process (1) is one fully inspired by and integrated with post-modern thinking. In speaking about post-modern thought, Ketelaar has drawn from the work of Niek van Sas, who writes: “postmodernism has not so much been the revitalizing of truth (to the point of even making it irrelevant) but rather the multiplication of perspective” (2). According to van Sas, post-modernism is less about deconstruction than it is a recognition that there are many coexisting constructions of reality. Whether conscious of post-modernism or not, contemporary archivists and researchers are engaged in the exploration of multiple perspectives. Nevertheless, archival institutions, especially those responding to the needs of government and business, have become less tolerant of heterogeneous archiving practices. Interoperability has become a necessary tool in the development of global commerce and politics. Yet, global standards have privileged one method of archiving over many others and, even more concerning, the international bodies that develop these standards seldom include input from marginalized (subaltern) voices. As a result, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to building and maintaining archives is rarely representative of the myriad ways in which one can archive, and more likely coincides with the values of hegemonic agents. As McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar point out in this article, the exclusion of marginalized communities is not surprising, given that few have the opportunity to participate in the development of archival standards. I would also suggest that marginalized people have more pressing issues to deal with than how to manage records; advocating for basic human rights takes precedence over meditating on the most ideal metadata schema. So, even though issues of multiplicity of perspective and, for example, control of access, disposal and preservation of archives, have been brought to the attention of archivists and researchers, little has changed in practice.

McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar offer two possible scenarios for the future of archives. First, they define and discuss the concept of incommensurable ontologies, used to characterize the incompatibility of indigenous ways of knowing and globalised western or ‘scientific’ knowledge. Although the concept resonates with post-modern archival theory, archival institutions have not developed a response to this issue. For example, how might an archives preserve the voices of aboriginal people who have communicated through oral narratives without using western tools of inscription to document these narratives? Likewise, how might an archives be refigured to respect the natural process of decay of artefacts (e.g. totem poles) that helps some communities heal and move on? This challenges the western emphasis on preservation and pits the accepted methods of ‘official’ archives against subaltern archival paradigms.

The second scenario, first articulated by South African archivist Verne Harris, challenges the false opposition of indigenous vs. global. As McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar explain, there is room for indigenous archival paradigms within international archival work and, in fact, the inclusion of these indigenous perspectives opens up possibilities for liberation. The authors see this scenario manifesting through partnerships between and among archives of different community levels. They also point to work by Chris Hurley and his concept of parallel provenance to suggest that there can be simultaneous record-keeping universes in every community—political, social, religious, or otherwise—bound by customs and norms. Ketelaar has also explored the implications of intersecting archival paradigms in an earlier discussion on joint heritage, a concept introduced by the International Council of Archives in 1978, to describe records of common experiences shared by two or more states having achieved political succession (3).

In addition, McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar make reference to the work of Jeannette Bastian, who developed the concept of a ‘community of records’ to draw out the experiences of the colonized from the records of colonizers. Working in partnership, for example, the people of the US Virgin Islands have been able to reclaim some of their documentary heritage from the annals of colonial Dutch history by working with the National Archives of the Netherlands. (It is also interesting to note that Eric Ketelaar was the national archivist of the Netherlands from 1989-1997). The Virgin Islands-Netherlands partnership has been celebrated in much of Ketelaar’s writing on archivistics.

Perhaps the most useful sections of the article discusses the implications of and for archival education, and the subsequent suggestions for new research areas that can begin to address, what one could call, the indigenous-global divide in archival methodology and theory. A common approach to building more inclusive archival frameworks is to make room for marginalized people to participate in archival activities. I would also suggest that there is an increasing urgency to train more community practitioners in archival work to ensure that records of subaltern voices are preserved for future research. Yet, engaging with marginalized people through professional education is highly problematic. As McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar point out, education is still based in western thought and anyone who completes an archival studies program is imprinted with western ideals (not inherently a ‘bad’ thing, but problematic nonetheless). They write, “while education is a potentially critical tool in empowering local and indigenous communities, it can also be used to subvert their traditional ways of knowing and recording” (p.159) Is archival education a tool of the master? If so, can these tools every be used for emancipation? (and what would Audre Lorde say about this?) McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar offer the possibility of establishing community-specific archival education. I picture a roving Indiana Jones-esque archival studies professor travelling from place-to-place in a Jeep with a sack of Hollinger boxes. Could the International Council on Archives play a larger role in establishing these types of programs? The authors provide a useful list of potential topics that could be taught in a more community-based program: how to manage layered juridical systems in colonial/postcolonial recordkeeping practices, benefits and drawbacks of stewardship versus custodianship approaches to archival work, the role of replevin and associated legal processes, etc.

McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar then turn their attention to blowing open archival research agendas to create a body of literature and new methodologies that respect local and indigenous ways of knowing. This section is particularly important for my own work as I embark on a PhD that looks at partnerships between grassroots and formal institutions. How will the concepts of parallel provenance, communities or records, and incommensurable ontologies emerge in the archival literature? Will this impact practice? How can we better understand community memory and evidence paradigms within archival frameworks? How do we contribute to community through the archival imperative? How are the relationships among records and people continuously and cumulatively woven together? What do archives do for the people who build, keep and use them? I found the article both inspiring and validating. McKemmish, Gilliland-Swetland & Ketelaar offer an important summation of increasingly pressing issues within archival studies. It’s also interesting to look at the research areas of many of my PhD colleagues and see that many of them are embarking on projects that respond to these same issues: agency, representation, ways of knowing, and the role of community archives, and the archives in communities.

1. Eric Ketelaar (2001) “Tacit Narratives: The Meaning of Archives,” Archival Science, vol. 1: 131-141.

2. ibid. p. 132.

3. Eric Ketelaar (2005). “Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records,” Archives & Manuscripts, vol. 33: 44-61.

 

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Barbara Craig’s “Selected Themes in the Literature on Memory”

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Jun 13

Barbara Craig (2002) “Selected Themes in the Literature on Memory and their Pertinence to Archives” American Archivist, vol. 65: 276-289

More than a decade after the publication of Kenneth Foote’s 1990 article on archives and memory, Barbara Craig returns to the discussion with a review of thirteen books from the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. Like Foote, Craig recognizes the power invested in memory as a metaphor for archives and archival work. As a conceptual tool, memory is a ‘convenient shorthand’ for describing the archivists duty to acquire, preserve and make available records of evidential value. Craig warns, however, that the metaphor’s usefulness also glazes over the complexity of what she calls social memory. She argues that archivists can enhance their understanding of archival work by more carefully considering the broad themes of memory studies and how these are pertinent to the archives.

Craig offers three ideas of memory:

  1. (1) Memory as a place or location where information and knowledge are stored or from which ideas, concepts and knowledge are recalled. This follows from Plato’s conception of memory as a wax tablet or Aristotle’s idea of the mind as an information storehouse and retrieval system. Pierre Nora (1997) also draws on location to discuss the collective memory of France as a nation. The memory as a specific location also appears in modern literature on psychoanalysis, psychology, neuroscience.
  2. (2) Memory as a process, activity or mechanism. This can be read in the work of Dame Frances Yates (1966), who thought of memory as the mechanism by which we construct knowledge, and in study of Medieval cultures by Mary Carruthers (1990), who argued that memorizing and recitation were moral activities thought of as communal knowledge and wisdom. Jacques LeGoff (1992) suggests that memory is the exploration of historical narrative to pursue ‘truth’; Patrick Hutton (1993) views memory as patterns of repetition in acts of remembrance.
  3. Memory as a construction or work in progress, not as something received but as something that can be measured of managed. Maurice Halbwachs (1950), the first intellectual to draw attention to the power of collective memory, argued that memory could not be separated from the conditions in which it is formed or recalled; he wrote that the past is not a fact, but recollection of events contextualized by the conditions of the present. Thus, memory is always a construction or reconstruction of the past. James Fentress and Chris Wickham’s Social Memory (1992) builds on Halbwachs’ ideas on memory, and Paul Connerton’s epic How Societies Remember (1989) describes memory as a performance of the past.

Craig recognizes that the archives are easily conceived as a storehouse, location or site for memories, but argues that metaphor can no longer be considered a benign trope of archival discourse. She weighs heavily on her third idea of memory as a reconstruction of the past and encourages archivists to consider their role in maintaining the authenticity and reliability of records so that future researchers are able to access trustworthy evidence. However, the archivist should / will have little influence on how these records are interpreted (or used to reconstruct memories).

Not surprising given Craig’s experience in appraisal discourse and methodology, she urges archivists to recognize the active role they take in selecting and preserving records. But perhaps more importantly, she also emphasizes that the further into the past the initial act of recordkeeping becomes, the more archives become social constructions and need to be re-constituted in different ways. Thus, she suggests that archivists take the time to document as much as possible about the context of the recordkeeping activities and the provenance of the records as a way to convey as much as possible about the purpose of the records as they were created: “The unique meaning of documents in context underscores the importance of provenance conceived as richly as possible, as source, as transmission over time, as locations, and as the locus of all of these aspects” (289).

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Kenneth Foote, “To Remember and Forget”

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Jun 13

Kenneth Foote (1990) “To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture” American Archivist, vol. 53: 378-392.

Foote, a professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin, presented a version of this paper at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in October 1985. Its subsequent publication in American Archivist marks the first instance in which the relationship between archives and collective memory was critically analyzed in archival literature. The conception of archives as memory is, as both Foote and Craig* (2002) have argued, a familiar metaphor; however, until Foote’s intervention archivists avoided further investigation into the power of this metaphor and the accuracy of its inherent claims.

Foote begins with the suggestion that archives play a special role in the transmission of ideas across space and time because they have a certain ‘fixed’ quality that assures their durability as memory objects. He notes that the co-evolution of writing and early civilizations also shows that the capacity to inscribe is integral to human communication. Inscriptions transmit information more accurately and efficiently than oral traditions. To be clear, Foote does not dismiss orality outright; rather, he argues that literate cultures have had an advantage over oral cultures because the written documents they produce can withstand long periods of time. Foote cautions archivists, however, to acknowledge other types of objects, artifacts and documents that help construct, reinforce or reconstruct collective memory—archives have not cornered the market on collective memory! Foote recognizes that archives are also the product of culture and are constituted within particular social contexts. Thus, they are also part of the collective memory as much as they are the touchstones for memory construction. They are also vulnerable to human intervention and can change over time to reflect the will or needs of the communities that they serve.

The article, while an earnest first step in bringing about a discussion on this topic, has only scratched the surface of the concept(s) of collective memory and its relevance to archives. For example, Foote offers the following two-part definition of collective memory: (1) it refers to the beliefs and ideas shared by a particular community of people and which can be used to produce a cohesive cultural identity for members of this community; and (2) it implies that “many individuals and organizations act collectively to maintain records of the past, even if these records are shaped by the demands of contemporary life” (380). While the definition is useful in its concision, it is also simplistic. Although I support the second statement, the first statement pares too much away for the sake of brevity and, as a result, it conflates collective memory with cultural norms. I would argue that collective memory is something more than tradition (oral, ritual or written); it is the traces of common history that can be pulled from these rituals, and the (re)construction of cultural identity based on these familiar traces. Beliefs and ideas might be formed from and reified by collective memory, but they are not the same. …. But even this is a simplistic description of what collective memory is or can be.

Foote does offer an interesting discussion about the different types of remembrance and its corollary, forgetting. In particular, the experience of violence can result in patterns of sanctification, designation, rectification, or effacement. Shameful behavior, such as complicity in atrocity, and difficult knowledge, such as bearing witness to trauma, can lead communities to efface memory by curating cultural narrative from only selective ‘positive’ historical facts, or to sanctify some traces of history and censor others.

Foote does not go far enough to suggest what role archivists might take in constructing collective memory, but he does acknowledge their active participation. His discussion of appraisal, for example, emphasizes the power of archives to both discard and select records for preservation based on their value to the archives. If I can infer from this discussion a next point, the role of archivists might be to ensure that the process of appraisal is documented in such a way that it conveys as much about the kinds of records that were culled as those kept. As a result of this transparency, researchers can begin to acknowledge the effective work of archivists on the body of records they keep.

* Barbara L. Craig (2002) “Selected Themes in the Literature on Memory and their Pertinence to Archives” American Archivist, vol. 65: 276-289.

 

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