Slides from Tuesday, January 23
In your posts for tomorrow, consider at least one of the following questions:
What are some key differences between the countries that Bickford examines (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay), and how have those differences shaped archival questions in each?
How would you define what Bickford calls, “The Archival Imperative”?
What changed from Bickford’s examination of Chile in 1999 to Strauss’s view in 2015?
“Historians looking back at the second half of the twentieth century will be likely to note that, throughout the world, human rights trials and truth commissions emerged as important instruments in the struggle for human dignity.” (Bickford, 1119)
This line really made me think of the Weld reading where she talked about how all these European donors were happy to shell out big bucks to help Guatemala establish its archive project. I thought it was really telling how she described the Europeans opinion as being that the archive works was the boring work that needed to be done to get to the human rights abuses. I think that’s pretty obviously the wrong way of looking at it. I say that because take the start of this article where it describes how the Belgians burned all their records of crimes in the Congo. And because of that, and I’m sure a lot of other reasons I don’t fully know about, that’s a genocide that has been lost to history. In fact, I don’t think I ever once learned about it in school growing up.
The archival evidence is the primary sources/ the proof that all these events happened. By maintaining the records archivists are preventing revisionist historians from denying that the atrocities didn’t happen. The records are what allow the cases against human rights abusers to go forward, without the records it would be impossible to bring anyone to justice.
In regards to the differences between the countries that Bickford examines I thought it was interesting how the Coup and then the human rights abuses that followed in Chile were considered unprecedented. Bickford writes about how Chile prided itself on being a liberal/ law abiding state then very quickly it turned into a brutal dictatorship. As a result, a strong human rights movement developed in Chile. While in Argentina it was a lot harder for a human rights movement that documented the human rights violations because Argentina is a lot bigger geographically and had a lot of different organizations producing different documents.
Question- do these human rights courts, like The Hague/ some UN agency, actually bring justice? Or are they more for show?
Quote: “If the multiple voices of memory are not preserved, it is weakened and bends more easily to the political whims of the present. The cost for a society without memory is far higher than the possibility that the wrongs of the past might be repeated. A people without memory form a society without identity” (Strauss 370).
Comment: The Archival Imperative is the responsibility to use best-practice preservation and dissemination techniques immediately for documents related to human rights or other socially relevant material. This is important because many HRNGOs see archiving as “unsexy” and therefore spend more time pursuing educational or legal goals. However, Bickford brought up a good point regarding the urgency of this task—the HRNGOs always refer to a “hazy future” when explaining when they will finally archive their material. The more the years go by, the less likely it is that these organizations will actually expend the resources to create an archive. Also, funding for human rights organizations has been declining in recent years.
Question: From my understanding, the Truth Commission after apartheid in South Africa was very effective in helping the country heal from their trauma. How did this commission differ from the Truth Commissions established in countries in the Southern Cone?
“Almost every HRNGO in the region feels strongly that archival preservation is important, and, through my interview research, I have learned that these organizations generally agree with the arguments made in this article. Nonetheless, many of these groups are working with small budgets and concentrating on other kinds of human rights work” (Bickford 1118).
Reading this brought to mind the struggles that we learned about at the HHRC. Each entity has goals and motivations, and having one agreed on repository kind of sucks when there are competing and conflicting interests. I see this as kind of a shame because in my experience, the fight to work within a budget in a way that will guarantee future revenue so you don’t have a really restrictive budget (i.e. creating something that people actually want to visit and to which they feel compelled to give money) almost always ends up not highlighting what you, as the curator/employee/archivist think should be the focal point. We touched a bit on the power of constituency in class on Monday, and I think that’s worth examining further.
How does the constituency/do the patrons shape the archive, or what from the archive gets represented? Is that bad? When should archivists step in, if ever?
“More specifically, an important challenge for researchers and others examining democracy and its relationship to past regimes in the Southern Cone will continue to be, quite simply, a clarification of what happened during authoritarian rule” (Bickford 1100).
The archival imperative that Bickford describes, as I understood it, is the need to preserve. Documents won’t be around forever unless we set them up to stay. The way Bickford took us through the specific issues of logistical nature, matters of privacy, and the financial means required for archival work to take place helped me to see why the “archival imperative” isn’t all that easy. And perhaps the most important use of archival material–the reason why there’s any sort of archival imperative in the first place–stems from the quote above. When it comes to human rights violation, the pursuit of justice requires an accurate understanding and proof of what actually happened. If documents are not archived, this is exceedingly difficult if not altogether impossible.
If archives are typically considered to never be complete, how can one presume to use them to sort out details of what actually happened under an authoritarian ruler? Is it more a matter of using them to piece together a narrative?
Hi Noa,
I think the best way that an archivist can come to a conclusion about what really happened is by comparing all of the material that they have as well as inspecting what material they do not have. Even without a fully comprehensive story, an archivist can still look at the silences present in the archive and hopefully piece together a narrative with what they already know. Of course, without sources from any opposing perspectives, I do not think we can ever truly know what they were thinking.
“Furthermore, they are reluctant to store these kinds of documents in national repositories, such as national libraries or archives, because they do not trust them.” pg. 1114 Bickerman
In states that have been riddled by corruption and authoritarian regimes, it makes sense for the general population to be wary of the government. In Lous Bickford’s “The Archival Imperative: Human Rights and Historical Memory in Latin America’s Southern Cone,” the author explains, in detail, of the archival issues in the post-authoritarian worlds of Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina. Based on Bickford’s synopsis of these states struggles with archives, it is just that the national repositories are not being given important document’s about their government’s past. However, it is important for citizens to learn from their history. What is the right way to handle this kind of tension between those who hold onto important state archives and the institutions that are supposed to protect them?
“An action strategy for addressing the Archival Imperative would need to address both logistical and financial support for projects that seek to preserve historical memory” 1999
I would define the Archival Imperative as the need for nations with a history of human right violations or distasteful past regimes to address these pasts and make primary source information from these time periods readily accessible. I asked a question in a post of few days asking if nations with these types of past have the responsibility to do what Bickford is talking about. The distinction is I was asking from more of a moral stand point, while Bickford is arguing that a nation must do this in order to attain a new “democratic and humanistic” culture. We have also discussed how, as also articulated by Bickford, how prioritizing the future can often lead to omission of the past. I think this is somewhat counterintuitive seeing how useful past events can be for predicting and shaping the future, potentially avoiding the pitfalls of the past.
Question: Are there any cases where forgetting the past entirely would be beneficial? It sounds like “ignorance is bliss” and the only thing that pops into my head is unimaginable trauma that the world would not be able to function in the light of.
“They do not have judicial power, but instead they are mechanisms that record human rights violations, they give voice to victims who can no longer speak and provide a safe space for victims who can speak to do so.” (Strauss 377).
In this piece, Strauss argues that when an archivist is looking at a source in which there are human rights violations, they cannot be passive and instead have to be objective. She states that humans innately seek justice, and to ignore that innate human sense would qualify as pushing oneself to the other side of the spectrum and ignoring a bias. An archivist can incorporate social justice by giving marginalized people archival justice. The liberation theology is incorporated in this sense because it argues that people who are not considered equal to others deserve this equality based on basic human rights. This means marginalized people should be allowed access to the archives and be able to write their own stories. By writing their own stories, they are able to address another perspective that otherwise would not be addressed. This addresses the needs of a person who has been given less rights by giving them a voice. An archivist has to be objective by giving everybody archival justice.
In terms of archival justice, by allowing only marginalized people to create the archive, does this take away the archival justice of the perpetrators?
Quotes: “The ideal model for primary document preservation…” – Bickford
“International funding for human rights in the region, for example, has already diminished substantially since the return of political democracy, and it may continue to be reduced over time.” – Bickford
Comment: Bickford’s description of “[t]he ideal model for primary document preservation,” reveals the extensive demand of resources, time, and energy that proper archival preservation and practice requires. And funding–that too Bickford makes very apparent as a need–and quite a large sum of it, which brings up a lot of questions on bias and politics in the archives. Proper archival process, as Bickford demonstrates, requires an immense amount of money which would be unlikely if not impossible for an archive to raise on its own. So, an archive needs sponsors. With sponsors comes money, but also…financial influence. However the sponsor deems an institution to be worthy of their money, the institution must take that on to get their sponsorship. At the end of their piece, Bickford suggests some solutions to this apparent problem: archives should seek out “existing and complementary organizations,” and national library systems for know-how and resources.
Questions: “[E]xisting and complementary organizations” are still organizations themselves subject to the influences of their sponsors. What methods of fundraising would leave the least amount of room for sponsor/political/financial influence? Would aiming for complete transparency of archival practices be a practical way of lessening historical misinterpretation and misuse?
“Private documents represent a challenge in terms of preservation. HRNGOs are often hesitant to make copies of these documents, fearing that they might be released publicly. Furthermore, they are reluctant to store these kinds of documents in national repositories, such as national libraries or archives, because they do not trust them.” (Bickford, 1114)
Bickford’s “Archival Imperative,” something which he defines as the necessity of properly storing, preserving, and organizing documents, seems to come from an almost naive desire to get every piece of paper possible, categorize it in an orderly and uniform manner, and publicize it to the world. Of course, as we have seen on multiple occasions in this class, that thought process on which the “Archival Imperative” seems to be founded is incredibly utopian in that it sounds like an excellent idea, but raises logistical, financial, legal, and organizational questions that oftentimes cannot be answered in a satisfactory manner. With that said, one type of question that I seldom ask is that of morality: Assuming that it is otherwise feasible to publicize everything immediately, *should* we?
In the quote that I pasted above, Bickford raises this important issue. Inasmuch as it is an archival desire to archive everything and make that archive public, the “Archival Imperative” will sometimes be threatened on ethical grounds. Too often, we see documents as documents and fail to recognize the face behind them. Some forms of documentation have the power to completely destroy lives. It would be nice if they could be made public, but the faces behind the documents could then land in existential jeopardy in one way or another.
And then we come to the issue of trust. What is the bright-line for a qualified archivist? Who can be entrusted to put the interest of the author and caretaker over the interest of their own collection, or even over the interest of the public? These are all questions that I simply do not know how to answer. I will grant that in the very next paragraph, Bickford talks about concrete actions such as delegating archival tasks to established research institutions abroad, but it is suggestions like these that raise more questions than they answer. What if there is an issue at customs, and the documents must be analyzed? What if documents are an integral part of a cultural narrative for a given country, and thus the government prevents their removal to a foreign location?
The “Archival Imperative” is a great idea, and in a perfect world, every document would be accessed by everyone without any privacy being infringed upon. But this is definitionally impossible, and it is in this sense that I feel as if Bickford somewhat undermines his own argument. With that said, though, I view this undermining not as an argumentative transgression, but a rhetorical strategy: Using utopianism to suggest concrete, real-world solutions.
Question: What is the bright-line for a qualified archivist? On a pedagogical level, is there really anything–other than available resources, which is the easy answer–that separates the small-town historical society from the special collections at Harvard?
“For liberation theologians and human rights activists, these ‘rights’ are not abstracted concepts, but are vital, social imperatives. The violation of these rights can result in brutal, repressive dictatorships such as that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. The results can also be more insidious, as the cumulative affect of individuals quieting their personal and political dissent results in a unilateral political system lacking in thoughtful debate.”
Where does a country or society’s freedom come from? In most cases, the answer would be that it had to be fought for. Few free societies peacefully rise up without some kind of struggle. Thus, archives are an imperative process to any free society, as it must be remembered how its freedom has been won. A society’s people must have access to and have an understanding of its archives in order to truly be liberated.
Question: Have there actually been any modern countries who rose up without a struggle? Is that possible?
“In Chile, archival repositories find their home among memorials, for their records commemorate the victims of the dictatorship. In this context, the lines dividing memorials, museums, and archives become less clear, for despite their methodological differences, these institutions serve the same purpose: the conscious construction of memory” (Strauss 383).
Next to this quote I wrote “aka education, no?”. I wonder why Strauss does not draw the differences between “construction of memory” and education more explicitly.
Amanda Strauss’s piece, ‘Treading the ground contests memory’, was tough for me to read. I spent last semester doing research on the history curriculum in Chile and Argentina and how they teach about their respective dictatorships/juntas. My focus was much more on education, pedagogy and national curriculum than Strauss’s piece gets into, but many of my underlying sentiments began the same as hers. I wonder if her piece too hopeful…
If huge swarths of a population justifies human rights abuses, what more can we do than museums? Need we do more? Yes they are steps to democracy, but they must be used, even by those who are made uncomfortable. There are still parents who line up to protest their kids field trips to el Museo de Memoria y Derechos Humanos.
Should we accept that this generation may never fully accept the atrocities they lived through, and that the best bet for this construction of memory lies in future generations? What role specifically do the archives play for students learning in the national consciousness of recovery from dictatorship and human rights abuses? How do we open them to students while maintaining their authenticity, validity and seriousness?