Urgent Archives
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Date
Authors
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Routledge
Routledge
Abstract
Description
Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description. Grounded in the emerging field of critical archival studies, this book uncovers how dominant western archival theories and practices are oppressive by design, while looking toward the the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Based on more than a decade of ethnography at community archives sites including the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), the book explores how members of minoritized communities activate records to build solidarities across and within communities, trouble linear progress narratives, and disrupt cycles of oppression. Caswell explores the temporal, representational, and material aspects of liberatory memory work, arguing that archival disruptions in time and space should be neither about the past nor the future, but about the liberatory affects and effects of memory work in the present. Urgent Archives extends the theoretical range of critical archival studies and provides a new framework for archivists looking to transform their practices. The book should also be of interest to scholars of archival studies, museum studies, public history, memory studies, gender and ethnic studies and digital humanities.
Keywords
SAADA, Archival studies, Hetero-patriarchy, Liberatory theories, Western archival theories, MLIS Student, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, South Asian American, Feminist Media Studies Scholars, Community Archives, Brave Heart, Minoritized Communities, Team USA, Responsive Culture, Linear Progress Narrative, Kimberly Christen, South Asian American Communities, MLIS Program, Land Reclamation, Japanese American Incarceration, Focus Group Participants, Linear Temporalities, Current Political Moment, Archival Imaginary, thema EDItEUR::G Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects::GL Library and information sciences / Museology, thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government, thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JK Social services and welfare, criminology::JKS Social welfare and social services::JKSN Social work, thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing