SAA Research Forum 2024
Slides | Transcript
Hello, my name is Itza Carbajal and I am a Phd candidate at the University of Washington iSchool focusing on youth records and memory making during moments of disasters.
Today I would like to bring to your attention a forthcoming book chapter on Affect and Archives. Affect sometimes referring to emotions, feelings, or the activities involved in experiencing these things essentially facilitates the translation and transformation of sensation to perceived states. Contemporary scholarship positions Affect as a somewhat destinationless framework that continues to gain a following and academic grounding in disciplines with critical angles such as critical archival studies. This is especially true in research and teaching areas that intentionally grapple with the ways theories such as deconstructivism and postmodernism challenges the goal of absolutism in academia. Due to space restraints, my article only situates Affect as it relates to archival scholarship and how archival scholars document and analyze affective experiences and perceptions of archival populations, services, practices, and places.
The book is an exploration on key terms in Critical Information Studies with Affect as my key term representing an opportunity to explore a concept with both immense potential, but also incredible complexity. Given that the archival field in the US context once ferociously fought for a veneer of neutrality arguing that archival institutions and by extension archivists should never take sides or express strong feelings or views on social matters, the apparent absence of Affect as a longstanding professional value or research interest is not surprising.
At the forefront of Affective considerations in the archival field are discussions on the relationships between archivists, record creators, record subjects, users, and archival donors. Careful consideration of archival donors and subjects for example brings to light changes in the field where many archival repositories and archivists no longer acquire materials from 3rd party vendors like collectors and now work more closely with creators or those most connected to the archival content.
Currently as seen by today’s earlier panel group there is an increasingly growing number of archival scholars turning their attention to issues of invisibilized and discredited archival labor. This can be understood through the feminist conceptualization of feminized labor and the systematic devaluing of certain fields, practices, or forms of work especially those deemed “female”. Or as Lapp argues there is a current shift from archivist as a caretaker to thinking about the archivist as undertaking acts of care; a shift which positions care, not as inherent or biologically determined, but as an act of relationality, responsibility and resistance” (Lapp 2019, 219).
Another notable emerging scholarship focus on Affect and archives includes the significance of physical spaces and the cultural, historic, and environmental impact of archival buildings and the activities held within these places. For example archival buildings as the physical holding place for archival materials function as both a symbol of knowledge and memory as well as the actual access point for the materialized memories that each record or artifact holds. Additionally there is an increasing and justifiable interest (maybe borderline obsession) on archival spaces and climate/environmental changes.
Now I ask you all, do either of these focus areas resonate with you or your archival work?
itzacarbajal.com 