Simon Fowler writes: “Archives should be a beacon of light. But so often, as this book suggests, this is not the case. There are constant pressures on archivists not to release material, to keep it secret to spare the blushes of the powerful. Against this are the pressures for public archival institutions across the world to provide access to documents that would otherwise remain closed or perhaps be destroyed” (22).
Fowler lays out a case for why legislation is helpful (and sometimes necessary) to archivists in that it allows them access to records that otherwise might forever remain sealed or be destroyed. He demonstrates that archivists can even be a target or pawn in a war of knowledge when he counters archives as “a beacon of light” in showing the reality of the “constant pressures” archivists face with sensitive material. This fits in with his other point about archives largely documenting and serving the lives of the rich and powerful. It seems that archives and archivists are not immune to broader class and economic tensions facing societies in the past and the present.
In reading the quote from Fowler above, my mind immediately turned to the ethics of archives. Do archivists report to a specific person or institution? Or does (perhaps “should” might be a better word choice) their loyalty in fact lay with the theory of what an archive should be?
I think your question raises a good point.
Unfortunately, I would say that historically speaking most archivists have had to report a specific institution (government/ or some higher power). I say this because the archives are so important to the story of the state. The archives preserve the history/ story and with that they are the controllers of the identity of the state. I am really thinking specifically of a totalitarian state, like the Soviet Union, where the story of the state played such a key role in shaping the every day actions of the country. In that situation I could hardly imagine archivists having free range.
Hi Noa, I believe that an archivist is/should be loyal to their theory of what an archive ultimately represents. This way, they are able to keep themselves in check in the best way possible in order to avoid any bias. If they do in fact report to a specific person or institution, I think this would be looking more at how a historian uses archival research. This reminds of what we read in a piece yesterday: the fact that there is a growing difference between how these two professionals use archives to their benefit and how historians come with a purpose in mind or a point to prove.
“However, the problem with destroying documents is that their content remains if not unknowable, very hard to discover and so speculation can rapidly gain the force of established truth.” (Fowler, 33)
This quote relates to what I wrote about yesterday in terms of the potential insignificance of the truth, or in this case the records of the truth. Written records are one way to record and recall history, but another way is obviously vocally and through story-telling. As the text mentions, sharing history through speaking lacks a lot of the limitations of written archives. Not only can the stories not be destroyed they also become much more malleable as it passes from one person to the next. It is hilariously ironic to image a circumstance where someone destroyed records of their misdeeds to hide them from the public but the speculations of what they have hidden develop into generally agreed upon facts that are wickeder than the original actions.
Question: Personally, would you rather have your history be strictly factually accurate, leaving out no details or event, but available to anyone who wanted to view it (which does not seem out of the realm of possibility with the trends of technology and global access to information) or have your history regulated, but somewhat subject to alterations by the curator?
Quote: “They were ‘unthinkable’ facts in the framework of Western thought” (Trouillot 82).
Comment: Trouillot brings up the interesting point that we incorporate new facts and data into our own pre-existing worldview. These frames-of-reference innately bias the way we synthesize information. A good archivist or historian should be able to acknowledge their biases in order to ensure that these biases do not affect their work. Trouillot’s quote also emphasizes the need for archivists and historians to challenge their own assumptions about their field of study.
Question: How do archivists attempt to combat bias in their work? How do archivists resolve disputes when they disagree on which documents are most important to preserve?
“One will castigate long-dead writers for using the words of their time or for not sharing ideological views that we now take for granted. Lest accusations of political correctness trivialize the issue, let me emphasize that I am not suggesting that eighteenth-century men and women should have thought about the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today. On the contrary, I am arguing that they could not have done so.” pg. 82 Trouillot
By stating that prominent thinkers of the enlightenment are exempt from criticism as esteemed figures pertaining to their racist material, Trouillot creates a certain kind of moral relativity. Whether or not the author is correct in his dismissal for one to be able to place a “politically correct” judgment on these characters, the idea in itself creates an interesting precedent for other situations. If this exemption is fair, does it apply to less educated communities in the modern world? For example, a portion of the United States today, like the Appalachian Region, bear large, impoverished, uneducated, and homogeneous populations. Many may critique these populations as racist or homophobic. If these persons have not received the same educational or economic advantages that a large amount of the population has, are they liable for bearing the weight of the title “racist” or “homophobic?” Do the structural circumstances that create groups of uneducated and impoverished people produce the same “inability” for these populations to understand “the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today” in the same way that Trouillot claims the Enlightenment figures are?
“One will not castigate long-dead writers for using the words of their time or for not sharing ideological views that we now take for granted. Lest these accusations of political correctness trivialize the issue, let me emphasize that I am not suggesting that eighteenth-century men and women should have thought about the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today. On the contrary, I am arguing that they could not have done so. But I am also drawing a lesson from the understanding of this historical impossibility” (Trouillot 82).
This section of the reading made me think about the part of discussion in class today where we talked about possible misinterpretation of objects from the past. Obviously, misinterpreting a note from an academic advisor is not the same scale as attributing beliefs and mindsets to people from the past, but I think another thing that historians have to keep in mind when they do research is how there might be information gaps not only in material we have, but also the extent to which we are familiar with that material.
I thought Trouillot was compelling in that I agree that we can’t expect people to have twenty-first century beliefs, but I don’t see that as an excuse to excuse certain behaviors. This selection made me think about the whole “your fave is problematic” thing, in that we have a responsibility to ourselves and our understanding of material to acknowledge how some things from the past might not be right or good. Understanding problematic viewpoints allows us to see how supposedly great thinkers could have been problematic, and it also might instruct us on how we can inform the future. I think using the past as a tool to inform the future is one of the most useful applications of history, but I wonder how we can separate utilizing the past from repurposing the past.
Question: How important is it to unpack mindsets of the past instead of just reporting on events that happened? How/can we divest The Greats from problematic things that they did or believed?
“If some events cannot be accepted even as they occur, how can they be assessed later on? In other words, can historical narratives convey plots that are unthinkable in the world within which these narratives take place? How does one write a history of the impossible?” (Trouillot 73).
When I first read this quote, I was frustrated. Do historical events need to be accepted into the common understanding of history in order to prove that they happen? I see now that maybe this is part of Trouillot’s idea of the unthinkable. The unthinkable that then happens puts historians of the time in the precarious position of trying to understand what they are living through.
My questions, then, may mirror Trouillot’s. Are these “unthinkable” events only understood decades down the line, when we can put them in the context of broad strokes of historical themes? What are other example of “unthinkable” events?
Quote:
“The first kind of tropes are formulas that tend to erase directly the fact of a revolution. I call them, for short, formulas of erasure. The second kind tends to empty a number of singular events of their revolutionary content so that the entire string of facts, gnawed from all sides, becomes trivialized. I call them formulas of banalization” (Trouillot 96).
Trouillot brings up an intriguing point considering multiple ways that the history of the Haitian Revolution has been distorted or erased. The formula of erasure results in all of the facts being erased from history in order to forget the revolution almost entirely. The latter formula, the formula of banalization, differs in that only certain people or points of views are emphasized in order to get a certain point across. This method can be used to present a picture that there may have been a larger amount of people who were worried about a slave uprising, rather than the fact that there were only a select few. Trouillot ultimately declares that both of these methods are formulas of science because they both result in the conveyance of misinformation. These have both had a major impact on how the Haitian Revolution is now perceived in the present; a lot of it’s impact on history has been lost in the pride of past colonialists. There is a minuscule amount of information available on an event that arguably was the ultimate catalyst in ending slavery.
Question:
How do archivists decide when to look into a seemingly insignificant event in pursuit of a greater truth? Is there a specific reason that propels them into this deeper research?
Hey, I think you bring up a really good point about different levels of concealing information– either on the part of the people who produced it, or on the part of the people reporting on it. From the readings, it seems like the authors are getting at the general point that information hidden at the time of production reflects the society of the time, and I think reporting on certain things reflect on our society. In class yesterday, we mentioned how the legacy of slavery is much stronger in the U.S. than in other countries that allowed slavery, and the readings from last night addressed how racial divides and denial made its trajectory different. I think our continued focus on things implies more about how we live today than what resources are available to study certain periods.
“Few questions of historical interpretation are more passionately debated than the those that have become intertwined with a national narrative and with the definition of how a country came to be what it is imagined to be.” (Scott, 149)
The founding narrative of any nation is always incredibly controversial. Take America for example- the narrative normally goes that a “small rag tag band of colonials, against all odds, overthrew a evil British Empire and fought for freedom. ” (honestly writing that has made me realize thats basically the plot of Star Wars)
However, we all know that the narrative of the founding of our country is way more than that. After all, the United States was not established as a free nation for all as a massive slave trade and slave based economy flourished after the revolution. However, that does not make the United States look good and its usually pushed aside. The origin of something, especially a country, is so important because its seen as foundation/ point of reference for future things to be built off of.
My questions is- can anyone name a foundation story of a country that is false, but was put in place to reflect the ideology of the country?
I think your point about foundation stories of countries that are false and don’t match realities but instead match ideologies is really interesting. An instance that comes to mind for me is not necessarily a foundation story but when past histories are altered in the name of founding ideologies. I’m thinking of Germany after World War I. As Hitler and National-Socialist ideology rose to power, they were able to harness the loss of the war and the awful-for-them outcome of the Treaty of Versailles as a way to feed into their ideology. Instead of blaming the loss on themselves, they blamed it largely on, for example, Jews. And this became a point of reference for future policies, propaganda, and actions to be built off of.
Quote: “In this particular provincial archive, as in other local archives in Cuba, the key records are located not in careful seclusion, but in a building whose door opens, both literally and figuratively, on to the street.” (Scott, 162)
This quote made me think back to a fleeting thought that I had on the first day of class. I remember noting that some archives exist for the sake of publicity, whereas others exist for the sake of concealment. I didn’t dig any deeper at the time, but this line from Scott’s work gives me reason for pause. Consider the archives beneath that police station in Guatemala City: In a technical sense, that vermin-infested heap of waterlogged documents and miscellaneous papers was an archive. But it didn’t at all exist for the sake of documental preservation. That particular archive had all the characteristics of an incinerator, save for the fire (though I do actually know from prior knowledge that some of the documents happened to be partially burned).
And then there’s this: The Cuban archive with open doors and public access. The irony of this obliging archive being located in Cuba, of all countries, is not lost on me. What’s more, the fact that an unsuspecting archive such as this one in Cienfuegos could give rise to narrative-challenging revelations also revels in its own brand of irony, seeing as how the secrecy of the Guatemalan archive changed national narratives in a comparable manner.
What I’m driving at here is the fact that archives in and of themselves can be a site of contention. Scott wrote about how findings made in a Cuban archive, and findings made *because* of a Cuban archive, yielded a narrative that dissented from the narrative of the very powers that went into creating that archive. Of course, the potential partiality of archives isn’t news, but much of what we’ve seen so far is theoretical partiality. Trouillot, for example, goes to great lengths to contextualize postmodern critiques of archival organization (which are likely centered at the semiological concept of compartmentalizing modes of signification), to outline positivism and constructivism, and to describe the occupation of the “archivist.”
But what I’m talking about–the dichotomy of form yet similarity of dissension in two different archives–is a real, tangible example of archival partiality, at least from a constructivist standpoint.
(In hindsight, writing that whole thing just to make that simple observation could be perceived as giving a giant middle finger to a reader, but that was totally not my intention.)
Question: Because archives have the implicit potential to be constructed and used with bias, it seems reasonable to discount extreme positivism in archival research prima facie. Does this necessitate unmitigated constructivism, or is there a middle ground?
Trouillot: “When reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs. They devise formulas to repress the unthinkable and to bring it back into the realm of accepted discourse”.
Well, this quotation couldn’t be more relevant to the dialogue taking place in the U.S.. nowadays. As we’ve all seen, people are becoming more and more partisan, unwilling to take an empathetic approach to darn well anything, sometimes even lying to themselves and others in order to maintain the perspective they currently have. Of course, this relates to the realm of archives as well. Documents and records held intact over substantial amounts of time have the potential to show this cognitive dissonance just as much as a silly comment or tweet does today. Thus, the producer of a given document must be researched and shown to not have had some outstanding bias or what have you. Of course, the perspective of any one given individual is important for painting a picture of what time may have been like in a given writer’s era, but one must take a step back and make sure it is a true representation of a time period, rather than just the exception.
Question: How much history have we misinterpreted from authors’ work exemplifying cognitive dissonance? Could some historical events have occurred in a far different fashion than we know?
Quotes: “The events that shook up Saint-Dominigue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were ‘unthinkable’ facts in the framework of Western thought” (Trouillot, 82, his emphasis).
“Worldview wins over the facts: white hegemony is natural and taken for granted; any alternative is still in the domain of the unthinkable” (Trouillot, 93).
Comment: Trouillot shows how people develop “narratives” about the world, conceive generalizations and hold them to be true and natural and right, which then proceed to alter their own thoughts about the world. People assume certain situations as being the rule, and then automatically assign anything that denies the rule as being purely exceptional, or, as Trouillot demonstrates with the example of the contemporary perceptions of the Haitian Revolution, “unthinkable.” As demonstrated in this reading, as well as others and class discussion, there is a drive to define, to strictly say what is and what is not. There are not oppositions only in perspectives on things; there are contradictions in the things themselves. Here, Trouillot brings up the hypocrisies of people like Thomas Jefferson, who fought for freedom while owning slaves. Trouillot’s references to the Enlightenment I thought were especially interesting, because they directly connected the Enlightenment with the concurrent existence of slavery. The connection made me realize that even though I knew the Enlightenment occurred with the presence of slavery, I did not associate the Enlightenment with slavery—in my mind they were separate issues—even though, as Trouillot points out, they interacted with each other on various levels. It’s like I had separated them in my mind because the perceptions I had of the Enlightenment and of slavery seemed irreconcilable—again, even though, as Trouillot points out, they interacted with each other on various levels. Enlightenment ideas had in fact allowed slavery to be ideologically sound, consistent with their ideas (their definition of “man” (82)).
Question: Do/how do changing moralities change our perceptions of history? Why did I separate the Enlightenment from slavery in my mind? Is that a common tendency?
Quote: “F. Gerald Ham argued that the archivist’s primary responsibility was to: ‘provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time…’ Key to this is the selection of the material that will be available to future generations.” (Thomas 20)
Comment: I think this quote from Thomas is interesting because he declares the primary responsibility of the archivist in the context of silences. In a way this quote and his subsequent argument, which he corroborates with Cook’s debate about the “need for archival institutions to be as representative of society as possible” and the question of “whether archival collection policies also reflect today’s society”, appeals to me as an explanation for the purpose of archives as well as a critique of the current state of archives and whether they serve this purpose he argues for.
Questions: Why are archives that are “as representative of society as possible” important and how do they serve society?
Simon Fowler writes: “Archives should be a beacon of light. But so often, as this book suggests, this is not the case. There are constant pressures on archivists not to release material, to keep it secret to spare the blushes of the powerful. Against this are the pressures for public archival institutions across the world to provide access to documents that would otherwise remain closed or perhaps be destroyed” (22).
Fowler lays out a case for why legislation is helpful (and sometimes necessary) to archivists in that it allows them access to records that otherwise might forever remain sealed or be destroyed. He demonstrates that archivists can even be a target or pawn in a war of knowledge when he counters archives as “a beacon of light” in showing the reality of the “constant pressures” archivists face with sensitive material. This fits in with his other point about archives largely documenting and serving the lives of the rich and powerful. It seems that archives and archivists are not immune to broader class and economic tensions facing societies in the past and the present.
In reading the quote from Fowler above, my mind immediately turned to the ethics of archives. Do archivists report to a specific person or institution? Or does (perhaps “should” might be a better word choice) their loyalty in fact lay with the theory of what an archive should be?
I think your question raises a good point.
Unfortunately, I would say that historically speaking most archivists have had to report a specific institution (government/ or some higher power). I say this because the archives are so important to the story of the state. The archives preserve the history/ story and with that they are the controllers of the identity of the state. I am really thinking specifically of a totalitarian state, like the Soviet Union, where the story of the state played such a key role in shaping the every day actions of the country. In that situation I could hardly imagine archivists having free range.
Hi Noa, I believe that an archivist is/should be loyal to their theory of what an archive ultimately represents. This way, they are able to keep themselves in check in the best way possible in order to avoid any bias. If they do in fact report to a specific person or institution, I think this would be looking more at how a historian uses archival research. This reminds of what we read in a piece yesterday: the fact that there is a growing difference between how these two professionals use archives to their benefit and how historians come with a purpose in mind or a point to prove.
“However, the problem with destroying documents is that their content remains if not unknowable, very hard to discover and so speculation can rapidly gain the force of established truth.” (Fowler, 33)
This quote relates to what I wrote about yesterday in terms of the potential insignificance of the truth, or in this case the records of the truth. Written records are one way to record and recall history, but another way is obviously vocally and through story-telling. As the text mentions, sharing history through speaking lacks a lot of the limitations of written archives. Not only can the stories not be destroyed they also become much more malleable as it passes from one person to the next. It is hilariously ironic to image a circumstance where someone destroyed records of their misdeeds to hide them from the public but the speculations of what they have hidden develop into generally agreed upon facts that are wickeder than the original actions.
Question: Personally, would you rather have your history be strictly factually accurate, leaving out no details or event, but available to anyone who wanted to view it (which does not seem out of the realm of possibility with the trends of technology and global access to information) or have your history regulated, but somewhat subject to alterations by the curator?
Quote: “They were ‘unthinkable’ facts in the framework of Western thought” (Trouillot 82).
Comment: Trouillot brings up the interesting point that we incorporate new facts and data into our own pre-existing worldview. These frames-of-reference innately bias the way we synthesize information. A good archivist or historian should be able to acknowledge their biases in order to ensure that these biases do not affect their work. Trouillot’s quote also emphasizes the need for archivists and historians to challenge their own assumptions about their field of study.
Question: How do archivists attempt to combat bias in their work? How do archivists resolve disputes when they disagree on which documents are most important to preserve?
“One will castigate long-dead writers for using the words of their time or for not sharing ideological views that we now take for granted. Lest accusations of political correctness trivialize the issue, let me emphasize that I am not suggesting that eighteenth-century men and women should have thought about the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today. On the contrary, I am arguing that they could not have done so.” pg. 82 Trouillot
By stating that prominent thinkers of the enlightenment are exempt from criticism as esteemed figures pertaining to their racist material, Trouillot creates a certain kind of moral relativity. Whether or not the author is correct in his dismissal for one to be able to place a “politically correct” judgment on these characters, the idea in itself creates an interesting precedent for other situations. If this exemption is fair, does it apply to less educated communities in the modern world? For example, a portion of the United States today, like the Appalachian Region, bear large, impoverished, uneducated, and homogeneous populations. Many may critique these populations as racist or homophobic. If these persons have not received the same educational or economic advantages that a large amount of the population has, are they liable for bearing the weight of the title “racist” or “homophobic?” Do the structural circumstances that create groups of uneducated and impoverished people produce the same “inability” for these populations to understand “the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today” in the same way that Trouillot claims the Enlightenment figures are?
“One will not castigate long-dead writers for using the words of their time or for not sharing ideological views that we now take for granted. Lest these accusations of political correctness trivialize the issue, let me emphasize that I am not suggesting that eighteenth-century men and women should have thought about the fundamental equality of humankind in the same way some of us do today. On the contrary, I am arguing that they could not have done so. But I am also drawing a lesson from the understanding of this historical impossibility” (Trouillot 82).
This section of the reading made me think about the part of discussion in class today where we talked about possible misinterpretation of objects from the past. Obviously, misinterpreting a note from an academic advisor is not the same scale as attributing beliefs and mindsets to people from the past, but I think another thing that historians have to keep in mind when they do research is how there might be information gaps not only in material we have, but also the extent to which we are familiar with that material.
I thought Trouillot was compelling in that I agree that we can’t expect people to have twenty-first century beliefs, but I don’t see that as an excuse to excuse certain behaviors. This selection made me think about the whole “your fave is problematic” thing, in that we have a responsibility to ourselves and our understanding of material to acknowledge how some things from the past might not be right or good. Understanding problematic viewpoints allows us to see how supposedly great thinkers could have been problematic, and it also might instruct us on how we can inform the future. I think using the past as a tool to inform the future is one of the most useful applications of history, but I wonder how we can separate utilizing the past from repurposing the past.
Question: How important is it to unpack mindsets of the past instead of just reporting on events that happened? How/can we divest The Greats from problematic things that they did or believed?
“If some events cannot be accepted even as they occur, how can they be assessed later on? In other words, can historical narratives convey plots that are unthinkable in the world within which these narratives take place? How does one write a history of the impossible?” (Trouillot 73).
When I first read this quote, I was frustrated. Do historical events need to be accepted into the common understanding of history in order to prove that they happen? I see now that maybe this is part of Trouillot’s idea of the unthinkable. The unthinkable that then happens puts historians of the time in the precarious position of trying to understand what they are living through.
My questions, then, may mirror Trouillot’s. Are these “unthinkable” events only understood decades down the line, when we can put them in the context of broad strokes of historical themes? What are other example of “unthinkable” events?
Quote:
“The first kind of tropes are formulas that tend to erase directly the fact of a revolution. I call them, for short, formulas of erasure. The second kind tends to empty a number of singular events of their revolutionary content so that the entire string of facts, gnawed from all sides, becomes trivialized. I call them formulas of banalization” (Trouillot 96).
Trouillot brings up an intriguing point considering multiple ways that the history of the Haitian Revolution has been distorted or erased. The formula of erasure results in all of the facts being erased from history in order to forget the revolution almost entirely. The latter formula, the formula of banalization, differs in that only certain people or points of views are emphasized in order to get a certain point across. This method can be used to present a picture that there may have been a larger amount of people who were worried about a slave uprising, rather than the fact that there were only a select few. Trouillot ultimately declares that both of these methods are formulas of science because they both result in the conveyance of misinformation. These have both had a major impact on how the Haitian Revolution is now perceived in the present; a lot of it’s impact on history has been lost in the pride of past colonialists. There is a minuscule amount of information available on an event that arguably was the ultimate catalyst in ending slavery.
Question:
How do archivists decide when to look into a seemingly insignificant event in pursuit of a greater truth? Is there a specific reason that propels them into this deeper research?
Hey, I think you bring up a really good point about different levels of concealing information– either on the part of the people who produced it, or on the part of the people reporting on it. From the readings, it seems like the authors are getting at the general point that information hidden at the time of production reflects the society of the time, and I think reporting on certain things reflect on our society. In class yesterday, we mentioned how the legacy of slavery is much stronger in the U.S. than in other countries that allowed slavery, and the readings from last night addressed how racial divides and denial made its trajectory different. I think our continued focus on things implies more about how we live today than what resources are available to study certain periods.
“Few questions of historical interpretation are more passionately debated than the those that have become intertwined with a national narrative and with the definition of how a country came to be what it is imagined to be.” (Scott, 149)
The founding narrative of any nation is always incredibly controversial. Take America for example- the narrative normally goes that a “small rag tag band of colonials, against all odds, overthrew a evil British Empire and fought for freedom. ” (honestly writing that has made me realize thats basically the plot of Star Wars)
However, we all know that the narrative of the founding of our country is way more than that. After all, the United States was not established as a free nation for all as a massive slave trade and slave based economy flourished after the revolution. However, that does not make the United States look good and its usually pushed aside. The origin of something, especially a country, is so important because its seen as foundation/ point of reference for future things to be built off of.
My questions is- can anyone name a foundation story of a country that is false, but was put in place to reflect the ideology of the country?
I think your point about foundation stories of countries that are false and don’t match realities but instead match ideologies is really interesting. An instance that comes to mind for me is not necessarily a foundation story but when past histories are altered in the name of founding ideologies. I’m thinking of Germany after World War I. As Hitler and National-Socialist ideology rose to power, they were able to harness the loss of the war and the awful-for-them outcome of the Treaty of Versailles as a way to feed into their ideology. Instead of blaming the loss on themselves, they blamed it largely on, for example, Jews. And this became a point of reference for future policies, propaganda, and actions to be built off of.
Quote: “In this particular provincial archive, as in other local archives in Cuba, the key records are located not in careful seclusion, but in a building whose door opens, both literally and figuratively, on to the street.” (Scott, 162)
This quote made me think back to a fleeting thought that I had on the first day of class. I remember noting that some archives exist for the sake of publicity, whereas others exist for the sake of concealment. I didn’t dig any deeper at the time, but this line from Scott’s work gives me reason for pause. Consider the archives beneath that police station in Guatemala City: In a technical sense, that vermin-infested heap of waterlogged documents and miscellaneous papers was an archive. But it didn’t at all exist for the sake of documental preservation. That particular archive had all the characteristics of an incinerator, save for the fire (though I do actually know from prior knowledge that some of the documents happened to be partially burned).
And then there’s this: The Cuban archive with open doors and public access. The irony of this obliging archive being located in Cuba, of all countries, is not lost on me. What’s more, the fact that an unsuspecting archive such as this one in Cienfuegos could give rise to narrative-challenging revelations also revels in its own brand of irony, seeing as how the secrecy of the Guatemalan archive changed national narratives in a comparable manner.
What I’m driving at here is the fact that archives in and of themselves can be a site of contention. Scott wrote about how findings made in a Cuban archive, and findings made *because* of a Cuban archive, yielded a narrative that dissented from the narrative of the very powers that went into creating that archive. Of course, the potential partiality of archives isn’t news, but much of what we’ve seen so far is theoretical partiality. Trouillot, for example, goes to great lengths to contextualize postmodern critiques of archival organization (which are likely centered at the semiological concept of compartmentalizing modes of signification), to outline positivism and constructivism, and to describe the occupation of the “archivist.”
But what I’m talking about–the dichotomy of form yet similarity of dissension in two different archives–is a real, tangible example of archival partiality, at least from a constructivist standpoint.
(In hindsight, writing that whole thing just to make that simple observation could be perceived as giving a giant middle finger to a reader, but that was totally not my intention.)
Question: Because archives have the implicit potential to be constructed and used with bias, it seems reasonable to discount extreme positivism in archival research prima facie. Does this necessitate unmitigated constructivism, or is there a middle ground?
Trouillot: “When reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs. They devise formulas to repress the unthinkable and to bring it back into the realm of accepted discourse”.
Well, this quotation couldn’t be more relevant to the dialogue taking place in the U.S.. nowadays. As we’ve all seen, people are becoming more and more partisan, unwilling to take an empathetic approach to darn well anything, sometimes even lying to themselves and others in order to maintain the perspective they currently have. Of course, this relates to the realm of archives as well. Documents and records held intact over substantial amounts of time have the potential to show this cognitive dissonance just as much as a silly comment or tweet does today. Thus, the producer of a given document must be researched and shown to not have had some outstanding bias or what have you. Of course, the perspective of any one given individual is important for painting a picture of what time may have been like in a given writer’s era, but one must take a step back and make sure it is a true representation of a time period, rather than just the exception.
Question: How much history have we misinterpreted from authors’ work exemplifying cognitive dissonance? Could some historical events have occurred in a far different fashion than we know?
Quotes: “The events that shook up Saint-Dominigue from 1791 to 1804 constituted a sequence for which not even the extreme political left in France in England had a conceptual frame of reference. They were ‘unthinkable’ facts in the framework of Western thought” (Trouillot, 82, his emphasis).
“Worldview wins over the facts: white hegemony is natural and taken for granted; any alternative is still in the domain of the unthinkable” (Trouillot, 93).
Comment: Trouillot shows how people develop “narratives” about the world, conceive generalizations and hold them to be true and natural and right, which then proceed to alter their own thoughts about the world. People assume certain situations as being the rule, and then automatically assign anything that denies the rule as being purely exceptional, or, as Trouillot demonstrates with the example of the contemporary perceptions of the Haitian Revolution, “unthinkable.” As demonstrated in this reading, as well as others and class discussion, there is a drive to define, to strictly say what is and what is not. There are not oppositions only in perspectives on things; there are contradictions in the things themselves. Here, Trouillot brings up the hypocrisies of people like Thomas Jefferson, who fought for freedom while owning slaves. Trouillot’s references to the Enlightenment I thought were especially interesting, because they directly connected the Enlightenment with the concurrent existence of slavery. The connection made me realize that even though I knew the Enlightenment occurred with the presence of slavery, I did not associate the Enlightenment with slavery—in my mind they were separate issues—even though, as Trouillot points out, they interacted with each other on various levels. It’s like I had separated them in my mind because the perceptions I had of the Enlightenment and of slavery seemed irreconcilable—again, even though, as Trouillot points out, they interacted with each other on various levels. Enlightenment ideas had in fact allowed slavery to be ideologically sound, consistent with their ideas (their definition of “man” (82)).
Question: Do/how do changing moralities change our perceptions of history? Why did I separate the Enlightenment from slavery in my mind? Is that a common tendency?
Quote: “F. Gerald Ham argued that the archivist’s primary responsibility was to: ‘provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time…’ Key to this is the selection of the material that will be available to future generations.” (Thomas 20)
Comment: I think this quote from Thomas is interesting because he declares the primary responsibility of the archivist in the context of silences. In a way this quote and his subsequent argument, which he corroborates with Cook’s debate about the “need for archival institutions to be as representative of society as possible” and the question of “whether archival collection policies also reflect today’s society”, appeals to me as an explanation for the purpose of archives as well as a critique of the current state of archives and whether they serve this purpose he argues for.
Questions: Why are archives that are “as representative of society as possible” important and how do they serve society?