Toward An Archival Reckoning
‘Toward an Archival Reckoning’ is a coauthored, collaborative project with historian Ashley D. Farmer, Ph.D., for the June 2022 issue of The American Historical Review.
Foregrounding our work in three parts:
a conversation about the challenges and possibilities of the profession and archiving,
a case study on our collaboration with the Chicago-based collective Honey Pot Performance, and
a call to action for guidance on how to address some of the pressing issues in archiving and historical preservation today
Dr. Farmer seeks to answer the following: What would it mean for historians and archivists to not just curate and write about the past but also confront it? To address how the disciplining structures of the archive and the profession entrench inequality even as we attempt to be inclusive, attend to the ways in which erasure is an integral part of professional standards, and acknowledge how repositories replicate oppression? How do we reckon with the unsavory origin stories of archives on which we base our social justice histories or the individualism embedded in preserving collaboratively constructed artifacts?
In addition to the article, Dr. Farmer interviewed Blackivist member Stacie Williams in March 2022 for History in Focus, a podcast by the AHR.
Cover of the June 2022 issue of The American Historical Review. Artist Dustin Klein projects an image of George Floyd onto the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, on June 18, 2020. Klein also projected the images of notable Black figures, including Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Billie Holiday, and W. E. B. DuBois, onto the statue in what he said was an effort to reclaim the meanings of the space. Later in June, Governor Ralph Northam ordered the Lee statue's removal. The monument's defenders went to court to prevent its removal, but their case was dismissed in September 2021 and the statue was removed on September 8. The pedestal with Black Lives Matter slogans and graffiti stayed in place until the end of the 2021, before also being removed. Photo courtesy of Reuters.