Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies
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Critical Feminism in the Archives
Get PDFThrough the use of feminist historiography this article examines some of the myriad ways in which feminist praxis has pushed against, challenged, enriched, dismantled, assimilated or otherwise affected archival theory and practice. We contend that archival theory and practice have yet to fully engage with a feminist praxis that is aimed at more than attaining better representation of women in archives. We begin this piece by tracing the ways in which archives became embedded in feminist social movements and can be understood as critical tools and modes of self-representation and self-historicization. In the second section, we consider the explicit presence of feminist theory in archival studies literature and contemporary practice, the key focal points and arguments that have challenged traditional understandings of archival work around gender. We then address, in the third section, the expansive figure of the archives in humanities and social science literature. This piece contributes significantly to thinking on the ways in which these conversations in the archival turn can, at their best, expose blind spots within the archival literature and provide us with theoretical tools to tackle what we take for granted. Finally, we offer ways in which we see critical and intersectional feminist theory can contribute to existing archival discourse and practice, critiquing concepts that have remained unquestioned such as community and organization. This piece exposes the transformational potential of feminism for archives and of archives for dismantling the heteronormative, capitalist and racist patriarchy
Classification Along the Color Line: Excavating Racism in the Stacks
Get PDFThis paper contends that systemic violence is fundamentally a classification problem. The interrogation of the production of racialized library subjects in relation to one another and in relation to political and social conditions may shed light on the intensely complex problems of racism in the United States today. I discuss the ways that sections of library classifications were constructed based on ideas about African Americans in relation to American social and political agendas. My claim is that the structures that were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are deeply embedded in our libraries and have participated in the naturalization of certain racialized assumptions and associations. In the 21st century we continue to maintain, apply, and refine a flawed structure. My aim is to provide a window into how epistemic violence affects American consciousness about race by revealing some of the ways that our library classifications have been woven together by a group of men who cited and informed one another and ultimately, organized and universalized American history. These classifications are structured around assertions about timeless and fixed national values constructed out of progressive conceptualizations of the nation and its citizenry. A reliance on racial exclusion was necessary for this grand narrative, and scientific theories and classifications provided legitimacy and fuel for racist programs. One of key ways that exclusion was legitimated and supported was through the application of evolutionary theory and principles. Social engineering, white supremacy, and conquest were justified and propelled by beliefs in the evolutionary superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not by accident that these ideas became foundational to classificatory practice in libraries. In fact, Thomas Dousa has drawn attention to the intellectual climate in which late 19th century library classificationists worked - particularly, the theories and classifications of the sciences and nature as devised by Auguste Compte, Herbert Spencer, and Charles Darwin - and argues that these ideas and systems inspired the introduction of evolutionary principles into bibliographic classifications.[i] The present paper is in agreement with Dousa's claim and argues that such a conclusion carries critical implications for understanding libraries' classifications of race and ethnicity. Emphasis is placed is on the legacy of the classification of books about people of African descent as variously named and conceptualized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The last section of the paper examines the classifications as performatives to examine some of the processes by which racism has become systemic on library shelves. [i] Thomas M. Dousa, "Evolutionary Order in the Classification Theories of CA Cutter and EC Richardson: Its Nature and Limits." NASKO 2, no. 1 (2011): 76
Engaging an Author in a Critical Reading of Subject Headings
Get PDFMost practitioners of critical librarianship agree that subject description is both valuable and political. Subject headings can either reinforce or subvert hierarchies of social domination. Outside the library profession, however, even among stakeholders such as authors, there is little awareness that librarians think or care about the politics of subject description. Talking about subject description with the authors whose works we hold and represent can strengthen our relationships, demystify our work, and hold us accountable for our practices. This paper discusses an interview I conducted with author Eli Clare about the Library of Congress Subject Headings assigned to his book, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. Clare describes feeling dismayed by and detached from the subject headings assigned to his book. He offers a sophisticated analysis of individual headings. He also reflects on the subject description project itself, using theories from genderqueer and transgender activism to discuss the limitations of categorization
Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction
Get PDFThis introduction defines critical archival studies and summarizes the articles including in the special issue
Archival Amnesty: In Search of Black American Transitional and Restorative Justice
Get PDFArchives as memory institutions have a collective mandate to document and preserve a national cultural heritage. Recently, American archives and archivists have come under fire for pervasive homogeneity - for privileging, preserving, and reproducing a history that is predominantly white and further silencing the voices and histories of marginalized peoples and communities. This paper argues that as such, archives participate in a continuing amnesty that prevents transitional and restorative justice for black Americans in the United States. Using the history of lynching in America as a backdrop, this article explores the records and counter-narratives archives need to embrace in order to support truth and reconciliation processes for black Americans in the age of #ArchivesForBlackLives
Insistering Derrida: Cixous, Deconstruction, and the Work of Archive
Get PDFGeneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is the lecture Jacques Derrida gave in 2003 at an event to honor Hélène Cixous and mark the donation of her archive to the National Library of France. The lecture was a moving tribute to Cixous (her corpus, her genius, her archive), but it was also Derrida's reading of Cixous' "secrets of the archive". This essay explores "the secrets" - those of Cixous, those of Derrida - along two primary lines of enquiry. On the one hand, the question of archival stakes - what stakes are at play in archive? On the other, the question of the work of archive. For both Cixous and Derrida the work of archive is an endless opening to what is being "othered" and a tireless importuning of a justice-to-come. The work of archive is justice. But what does that work look like? Is there a deconstructive praxis in archive shaped by the call to, and of, justice? What stranger emerges from an insistering of the familiar Derridean formulations
Power to the People: Documenting Police Violence in Cleveland
Get PDFArchivists have long recognized the inherent historical and social mandate in preserving stories of those who endured violence at the hands of the state. Examples of this responsibility include archivists who recorded public tribunals in post-apartheid South Africa, documented stories of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II, and acquired collections of 1960s civil rights activists who experienced military intervention while fighting to end segregation. These endeavors align with the historian Howard Zinn's call for archivists to "compile a whole new world of documentary material" about the lived experiences of marginalized populations and communities. Drawing upon Zinn's charge as well as scholarly literature around community archives, social justice, and human rights, this article describes the joint effort of community organizers and professional archivists who collaborated to establish a community archive for victims of police violence in Cleveland, Ohio. The archive, A People's Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, provides a sustainable, autonomous means for Cleveland residents to share their first-hand accounts of police violence in the region. The authors will narrate the archive's conception and development as well as advance the archive as a post-custodial model for other grassroots organizations protesting various forms of state violence
Mind the Gap: Towards the Integration of Critical Gerontology in Public Library Praxis
Get PDFAging populations challenge public libraries to adapt their materials, services and programming to maximize the wellbeing and functional capacity of older adults and enhance their social participation and security. For older adult patrons using public library spaces and services, the capacity to which the public library has been able to deliver on these qualities remains unclear. In the past, libraries and library staff have been critiqued for narrowly interpreting the needs of older adults, concentrating on aging as a loss or deficit. To understand the current state of Canadian urban public library services for older adults, publically accessible texts, documents and reports made available on five public library systems' websites were analyzed. This analysis uncovered certain gaps in adherence to key guidelines in the Canadian Library Association's Guidelines on Library and Information Services for Older Adults and revealed a lack of integration of older adults' own ideas and feedback for their programs and events. The incorporation of a critical gerontology approach throughout the analysis begins to elucidate this study's findings and calls for the questioning of current conceptualizations of older adults and the library services created for them. Public libraries are uniquely poised to engage with older adults and the addition of a critical gerontology lens in library practice and research will aid in the refocusing of resources and policies to more responsively support older adults' evolving needs
A Matter of Life or Death: A Critical Examination of the Role of Records and Archives in Supporting the Agency of the Forcibly Displaced
No full textHaving the necessary documentation to cross borders, claim refugee status or benefits, settle elsewhere or return to sites of origin may literally be a life or death matter for people who have been forcibly displaced by persecution, war, or natural or economic disasters. This paper argues that government and other organizational archives that hold necessary records are not epistemologically or structurally oriented to address the immediate needs of the forcibly displaced and other "non-citizens" who reside in liminal spaces and temporary shelters or who move across multiple jurisdictions or nations and often resort to "irregular" forms and uses of records to survive. For the archival field to play a proactive role in supporting the survival, resettlement and recovery of the forcibly displaced, theoretical, organizational and practical reorientation is required. Such reorientation should be based in transnational and transinstitutional thinking and proactive humanitarianism that engages at the level of affected individuals and their everyday lives. It should also account for records generated or deployed in exigency or in other forms of radical agency
On "Diversity" as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies: A Critique
Get PDFDrawing on a range of critical race and anti-colonial writing, and focusing chiefly on Anglo-Western contexts of librarianship, this paper offers a broad critique of diversity as the dominant mode of anti-racism in LIS. After outlining diversity's core tenets, I examine the ways in which the paradigm's centering of inclusion as a core anti-racist strategy has tended to inhibit meaningful treatment of racism as a structural phenomenon. Situating LIS diversity as a liberal anti-racism, I then turn to diversity's tendency to privilege individualist narratives of (anti-)racism, particularly narratives of cultural competence, and the intersection of such individualism with broader structures of political-economic domination. Diversity's preoccupation with demographic inclusion and individual behavioural competence has, I contend, left little room in the field for substantive engagement with race as a historically contingent phenomenon: race is ultimately reified through LIS diversity discourse, effectively precluding exploration of the ways in which racial formations are differentially produced in the contextually-specific exercise of power itself. I argue that an LIS foregrounding of race as a historical construct - the assumption of its contingency - would enable deeper inquiry into the complex ways in which our field - and indeed the diversity paradigm specifically - aligns with the operations of contemporary regimes of racial subordination in the first place. I conclude with a reflection on the importance of the Journal of Critical Information and Library Studies as a potential site of critical exchange from which to articulate a sustained critique of race in and through our field