{"id":1286,"date":"2025-10-14T10:42:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2025-10-14T10:42:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:42:33","slug":"ruth-kramer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/2025\/10\/14\/ruth-kramer\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruth Kramer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ruth Kramer<\/strong> is a PhD student in History at the University of Virginia. Her research interests broadly include the 20th Century United States, particularly periodical and magazine cultures, archive-building methodologies in marginalized communities, and lesbian-feminist community-building efforts in the American South and Midwest. She has also researched representations, embodiments, and enactments of American masculinity in Playboy magazine and how Playboy magazine aims to construct its own “conceptual community” for American men in the post-war era. In addition to her research, she is a trained archivist and librarian and has previously worked with and within special collections, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Archival Reflections: Disrupting History, Questioning Form, and Offering Alternative<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Introduction: What and Who is the Archive?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I visit my parents\u2019 home in Cincinnati, I like to spend time in the basement, picking through all the boxes filled with family items. I\u2019ve dug through my own seventh-grade art and poetry projects many times, and touched the first lottery tickets printed in the state of Ohio, sold at and taken off the counter of my grandfather\u2019s drug store. I\u2019ve held the pressed yellow roses from my great-grandmother\u2019s funeral and have run my fingers over the copy of the Bible she used most when she was alive. Nestled next to these boxes are the Christmas ornaments and the photo albums, lined up beside Easter stuffed animals and most of Johnny Bench\u2019s baseball cards from his years as the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds. I love being in the physical setting of the basement, sitting on the large, beige carpet in the middle of the room, listening to the water run throughout the house and the hum of the glowing light bulbs. I bring drinks and pens into this archive. I pick up photos without gloves and don\u2019t perfectly return each item where it was in the box originally, but my mother has given me permission for this, as long as the lid easily closes.<\/p>\n

To some, this collection is not an archive. These materials are that of a single family in suburban Ohio. They do not document any great political battles, or chronicle a single, unique experience that metaphorically connects all humans and their quirky commonalities. They are stored in a personal basement within those Ohio suburbs. Perhaps it is the mix of materials that doesn\u2019t qualify this archive, or where it is stored. Yet, the scrapbooks in my parents\u2019 basement, and the collection of yearly Christmas cards in yours, are an archive. Deeply personal and emotionally rich, these archives disrupt institutionalized articulations and perceptions of \u201carchival meritocracy\u201d or the earning of one\u2019s place in the constructed narratives of the past.\u00a0Archives, traditionally, are \u201cpermanently valuable records\u2026of people, business, and government.\u201d[1]<\/span><\/a> An emotional and personal connection to \u201carchives\u201d and what they hold is not a part of this definition, and it is this broadness that leaves ample room for possibility, yet also for much difficulty.<\/p>\n

Despite the sparks of joy, I feel when rifling through the boxes in my parents\u2019 home, \u201cthe archive\u201d has historically been, at best, uncomfortable, and most frequently, unsafe and unwilling. The archive\u2019s history is inextricably tied with global histories of white supremacy, colonization, and oppression; the archive\u2019s purpose is to aid in the production of history, the narrative of \u201cwhat is said to have happened\u201d produced and wrapped in \u201ca particular bundle of silences.\u201d[2]<\/span><\/a> This sort of archive, one rooted in institutional and formal processes of recording the past, has aided the state and failed the state\u2019s people. The general refusal to include non-normative perspectives and experiences in the archive, relays a very clear message to those who exist outside of that state-sanctioned normativity: you, your life, and your experiences do not enrich the legacy and legend of the state. Even worse, you threaten it.<\/p>\n

As Achille Mbembe observes, the state\u2019s power over the archive comes not just from \u201cits ability to recall,\u201d but its \u201cability to consume time, that is, to abolish the archive and anaesthetize the past. The act that creates the state is an act of \u2018chronophagy.\u2019 It is a radical act because consuming the past makes it possible to be free from all debt. The constitutive violence of the state rests, in the end, on the possibility, which can never be dismissed, of refusing to recognize or to settle one or another debt.\u201d[3]<\/span><\/a> While the archive empowers the state, it is also the source of the state\u2019s power. The existence of the state\u2019s archive relinquishes permission of the archive\u2019s continued existence to the state; in this way, the whims of the state come before the knowledge and information of its own past. This is because the archive is itself a revealing history, and it articulates something about the histories of institutions, about the archival profession, and even about what research is done\u2014what scholarship is even possible to produce\u2014within the bounds of archival limitations. Perhaps by looking at the archive as an agent in the process of history making, both in the moment of history\u2019s action and in its aftermath, when archives are sold, processed, cataloged, stored, cared for, and used, we can better understand how the archive, like people, like structures, has acted throughout the years.<\/p>\n

The limitations of institutional archives are many, and my research and review of the subject\u2019s historiography reveals four main failures within the archive, each of which can be attributed in origin to the development, incorporation, and enforcement of American white supremacy. While there are certainly limitations missing from this analysis, the four major categories of limitation I have identified in the archive are: 1) absences and silences, 2) representational harm and the centering of suffering, 3) practical failures of medium, and 4) influence upon the archivist and institution. When institutional archives do reveal their limitations, people then seek alternatives. It is because of, and despite, these histories of violence and exclusion that we must turn towards archival alternatives. While it is not possible to cover each type of archival alternative, my aim is to express the multiplicity of archival purposes and provide examples of alternatives that encompass a variety of community needs. Archival alternatives, a bit unlike the initial, disrupting critique of the institutional and state-sanctioned archive, tend to lean more towards joy, community care, and the building and preservation of shared knowledge, resources, and traditions.<\/p>\n

Even when we can acknowledge and locate the limitations of the archive, this acknowledgement of what is not enough is itself not enough<\/em>. These motivations for archival alternatives seek to fill what institutional archives lack; alternatives give voice to people\u2019s lives as individuals, as community members, as people. The archive is a deeply emotional place. Saidiya Hartman feels this emotional pull from the archive and the scholarship she produces from it: \u201cThis writing is personal because this history has engendered me, because \u2018the knowledge of the other marks me,\u2019 because of the pain experienced in my encounter with the scraps of the archive\u2026\u201d[4]<\/span><\/a> The paths of archival alternatives give us room to dream, to create, to even feel <\/em>something other than the pain and sadness that comes with being excluded and purposefully made invisible. In the building of archival alternatives, perhaps we need not assimilate people into the archive. Perhaps, in these alternatives, we can all just belong<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Maybe my mom\u2019s Johnny Bench cards and my dad\u2019s high school portraits don\u2019t constitute what we know to be an institutional archive. But, those baseball cards were shown to me for the first time when I started playing as a softball catcher, and my mom and I were able to bond over our shared love of sports. And, more humorously, my dad\u2019s high school portraits are the only evidence I have of the blond hair he had throughout his adolescence. The fragrance emanating out of my great-grandmother\u2019s Bible is all I know of her person, this scent is how we were introduced. The emotional element of the archive cannot be ignored, whether it be within the walls of an institution or in the arms of our communities. My exploration and disruption of the archive begins with an acknowledgement of the origin of archives, and of their limitations before moving into community-led archival alternatives that not only allow for a personal connection with the archive, but encourage and call for it. We each are we the people<\/em>. Whether we happen to find a reflection of ourselves, our families, or our communities tucked into a single folder at the Beinecke or plastered in pixels across our computer screens, the archive of us is all around us. You don\u2019t need to earn your place within it; already, you are <\/em>it.<\/p>\n

Section I: The Origins and Limitations of Institutional Archives<\/strong><\/p>\n

The history of \u201cthe archive\u201d is long and varied, yet certain themes and priorities carry across eras and geography. They constitute and construct the past, they prove or disprove presence, they speak and silence in accordance with the power which they most devoutly serve. Though there are many articulations of \u201carchives\u201d throughout time, space, and empire, the historical focus of the archive has been on the state, its government, and its actions. Inseparable from these archival articulations, then, is \u201chow the archive and historical production facilitate the survival of particular stories and the erasure of others.\u201d[5]<\/span><\/a> The concept and embodiment of the archive has ancient origins; the word \u201carchive\u201d is itself rooted in an institutional understanding of what the keeping of records entails and seeks to include. The origin of the word is originally Latin, arch\u012bum or arch\u012bvum<\/em>, coming from the Greek arkheion<\/em>. This term arkheion <\/em>refers to the location where important records of the state were stored and then studied, which was traditionally the residence of a civilian legal administrator or \u201cruler,\u201d or the Archon. The Greek verb arkh\u014d <\/em>means to \u201cbegin, rule, or govern.\u201d[6]<\/span><\/a> The etymology of the word \u201carchive\u201d reveals the traditional and intended purposes of archival storage and use, and illuminates how interwoven the institutions of the state and the archive truly are.<\/p>\n

With this ancient etymological origin in state power, the continuing development of the archive as an arm of various state legacies around the world and throughout time is unsurprising. Archives\u2014and their access methods\u2014existed in ancient China, ancient Greece and in ancient Rome, as well as in other places around the globe.[7]<\/span><\/a> In the development and maintenance of nation states, \u201cthe historian and the archivist have long been so useful to the state, notably in contexts where the latter was set up as an appointed guardian of that domain of things that belong exclusively to no one.\u201d[8]<\/span><\/a> The state\u2019s derision of power and status comes from the archive, its protectors its own knowledge-keeper (the archivist) and its own story-teller (the historian). The archive, then, is likely to share many similarities with the state itself; the archive is not necessarily a reflection of a full or completely true history, rather, in this case, it serves as a reflection of what the powerful seek to record, remember, and espouse as history.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the first institutional archive was the National Archives and Records Administration, which was established in 1934. Just over 90 years later, the National Archives has over 13 billion pieces of paper, over 40 million photographs, and more than 33 billion electron records.[9]<\/span><\/a> The purpose of this institution was, and is, to store and preserve the records of the United States government, emphasizing the authority of the United States government, both structurally and socially.[10]<\/span><\/a> While the National Archives has expanded their collections to be more inclusive of citizen life, the purpose and founding mission of the institution was in service to the United States government, its actions, and its legacy. In addition to the National Archives, the United States has several other institutional and state-sanctioned archives and collection sites, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.[11]<\/span><\/a> It is important to note that an institutional or state archive is not <\/em>dictated by what records the institution has, per se, but by how the institution is structured, as well as what the institution seeks to prioritize and serve. While these institutions focus more on individuals, society, and cultural evolution, especially throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, they still are connected to the United States government. The government exercises a level of control over these institutions in a variety of ways, including fiscal support, events and programming, and even employment. Recently, the Librarian of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, was removed from her position by President Donald Trump and his administration, emphasizing the United States\u2019 continued expression of federal control over the archive and cultural heritage institutions.[12]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Though institutional archives can exist and differ from one another in many ways, what connects them is their wealth and power. The archive is a location that \u201crests upon a founding violence\u201d which \u201cdetermines, regulates, and organizes the kinds of statements that can be made\u2026and as well it creates subjects and objects of power.\u201d[13]<\/span><\/a> Archives, controlled by the state, by corporations, by universities, or other capitalist American institutions, are themselves power<\/em>. The ruling class of American capitalist society then use the power and influence of the archive, and other cultural institutions, to exert control and maintain status in broader American culture; the archive is an \u201cinstitution\u201d itself that is constructed and supported by and for the state and the status quo of American capitalism, white supremacy, and normativity.[14]<\/span><\/a> The archive leaves little room for defiance or revision, especially when a historical narrative is perceived to be correctly and solidly determined.[15]<\/span><\/a> The archive holds power not just over its current society, but its previous articulations as well, and the most powerful and wealthy within a society hold power over the archive.<\/p>\n

The histories of American colonization and racism are intertwined with the history and development of the American archive. This is the overarching limitation of the American archive; the imposed absences and silences within the archive speak plainly not just about how individuals and groups of history were viewed at the time and now, but how the archive itself is a vehicle for understanding the historical priorities and cultural values of American white supremacy. In this way, the archive is \u201canother form of fiction,\u201d a \u201ccemetery,\u201d a \u201cmortuary,\u201d \u201ca death sentence, a tomb\u2026an asterisk in the grand narrative of history.\u201d[16]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The faults and failures of the archive call out to us as scholars and as individuals living with the legacies of constructed pasts and narratives because they elicit such strong feelings<\/em>. Anger, sadness, abandonment, betrayal, hurt, confusion are just some of the feelings that emerge when confronting the archive, as \u201cthe turn towards archives is emotionally laden\u201d and weighs not just upon the intellectual aspect of research, but the affective side as well.[17]<\/span><\/a> Even though we know the histories and articulations of white supremacy, of hatred and bigotry, of exclusion and harm, it is another thing entirely to know, see, and feel it in the silence scribbled across photographs and harm typed neatly into an essay\u2019s paragraphs. These dissatisfied feelings are a form of knowledge, a gut instinct that something about the record is not quite right<\/em>.[18]<\/span><\/a> We must allow these feelings to push us, to encourage our curiosity and our belief in an alternative archival potential. I have located four specific limitations in the archive, and though there are certainly more, I see these limitations and their articulations in institutional archives as illustrating the need and desire for alternatives. These limitations\u2014absences and silences, representational harm and the centering of suffering, practical failures of medium, and influence upon the archivist and institution\u2014reflect the society the archive is created in, one dominated and led by tenants of white supremacy and anti-Blackness.<\/p>\n

The first limitation, perhaps one of the most obvious, is the absence and silencing of individuals in the archive. Due to the archive\u2019s position under the state\u2019s authority, individuals and groups who question the state, point out hypocrisy, or otherwise dissent from the government and its domestic or foreign policy, are often omitted and silenced in the archive. According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, \u201csilences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).\u201d[19]<\/span><\/a> Silences are near inherent to the forming of \u201cwhat is said to have happened\u201d as \u201cpower does not enter the story once and for all\u2026it precedes the narrative proper, contributes to its creation and to its interpretation.\u201d The archive derives its power from the state, meaning that power, in this case, cannot be \u201cblocked or excised. Power is constitutive of the story.\u201d[20]<\/span><\/a> As Saidiya Hartman observes about the archival absences and presences of enslaved Black women, \u201cWhat else is there to know? Hers is the same fate as every other Black Venus: no one remembered her name or recorded the things she said, or observed that she refused to say anything at all. Hers is an untimely story told by a failed witness.\u201d[21]<\/span><\/a> This silence, this failure does not just facilitate the story of colonization and white supremacy\u2019s power; it allows for its outright invention, its \u201cinstituting imaginary.\u201d[22]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Not having an archive and not having sources of a past, in resistance, resilience, or joy, is a very fracturing and disturbing experience. \u201cHistory is the fruit of power\u201d for the state and for institutions, and the lack of historical representations for individuals and groups is a disenfranchising and disempowering encounter.[23]<\/span><\/a> It makes the task of writing history exceedingly difficult, it places the exploration of the \u201cfictions of history\u2026beyond what [can] be thought within the parameters of history.\u201d[24]<\/span><\/a> When an individual\u2019s life exists in silence and predetermined erasure, \u201can act of chance or a disaster produce[s] a divergence or an aberration from the expected and usual source of invisibility and catapult[s] her from the underground to the surface of discourse.\u201d[25]<\/span><\/a> When words articulated in the archive are rooted in horror, and suffering, silences are indicative of unknown, buried truths; in empirical archives, silences speak<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Often the state and institutional archive, as another form of disempowerment and as an exercise of control over the dominant narrative, will include marginalized individuals only in situations in which they can be heavily misrepresented and stereotyped, as well as historical moments of severe suffering or by connecting their historical existence with marginalization only <\/em>and thus historically defining the group by their oppression. When there are presences of marginalized individuals in the archive, however, their representations are often directed by white supremacy and severe misrepresentation of life, action, or personal beliefs. In Marisa J. Fuentes\u2019s study of the archival presence of Rachael Polgreen, a free Black woman in Barbados who enslaved other Black women, Fuentes argues that \u201cPolgreen\u2019s archival remains and the histories written about her clearly\u2026demonstrate her limited power in self-representation\u201d and reveal how Polgreen\u2019s agency is perceived by \u201cauthors of her subsequent narratives\u201d as evolving from \u201cher material success.\u201d[26]<\/span><\/a> Fuentes shows how stereotypes and biases around Polgreen not only contribute to a misrepresentation of her life and experience, but also creates a space for others to actively misrepresent and speak for her: \u201cTracing the manner in which Polgreen enters the historical record and accounting for the power with which her story is reproduced allows us to understand the productive nature of history\u2014and illuminates what is silenced in the process.\u201d[27]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

In the creation of state archives in institutions today, suffering is highly valued and is a defining aspect of many collections pertaining to marginalized people. If a community of people are solely defined by their pain, there is no room for joy or creativity in collective and individual historical perception; in Hartman\u2019s explanation of her work in \u201cVenus\u201d she writes \u201cI want to say more than this. I want to do more than recount the violence that deposited these traces in the archive. I want to tell a story about two girls <\/em>capable of retrieving what remains dormant\u2014the purchase or claim of their lives on the present\u2014without committing further violence in my own act of narration.\u201d[28]<\/span><\/a> This flattens the historical action and agency of marginalized people, evidencing the experiencing of history, rather than the making of it.<\/p>\n

Some limitations of the archive are not so directly informed by American cultural values of white supremacy. Parts of the archive are unavailable because of \u201cpractical failures\u201d like floods, fires, theft, pests, and general aging and decay. Though these disasters are often not directed by human hands, they can lead to further issues in the archive. These practical failures, in many ways, constitute an \u201cunknowable\u201d archive of materials that cannot be recovered because for some reason or another, they were destroyed. Often, these sorts of practical failures occur at under-resourced institutions, such as local historical societies and other local history institutions, which tend to be more vulnerable to disasters due to a lack of funding for both preventative measures and disaster response. For example, Whitney Plantation, the only Louisiana museum to focus on the lives of the enslaved people living and working on the plantation, suffered significant damage in 2021 after Hurricane Ida and temporarily closed. After the storm, many repairs were needed, but some of the museum\u2019s structures were lost to the storm and destroyed completely.[29]<\/span><\/a> Additionally, however, practical failures include \u201cfailure\u201d of medium, which concerns the cheapness of paper used in small press newspapers, or the primary transference of knowledge orally can feel like silences in an archive defined by written word, or the rapid deterioration of digital archives and the obsolescence of technology.<\/p>\n

Yet, this is a method that encourages reflection on forms of knowledge that are able to be preserved in institutional and state-sanctioned archives; oral traditions cannot be preserved in an institutional archive unless its medium is altered to be a written transcript or an audio recording. While oral history work throughout the latter twentieth and twenty-first centuries has expanded representation in archives dramatically, they still come with their own limitations and barriers to access. Medium \u201cfailures\u201d can be an acknowledgement that not everything can or should be saved; sometimes community and memory are born out of spontaneity and cannot be saved (the feeling<\/em> cannot be preserved). Derrida noted something similar in Archive Fever<\/em>, observing that the \u201cfever\u201d of archiving any indication of a memorable past can open up the possibility for other memories to be forgotten in the process, and that archiving decisions are often directed by those in power.[30]<\/span><\/a> Sometimes, the archive is a better tool of community, rather than the state, when the archive is secondary to life that is felt and lived, that is recollected rather than recorded.<\/p>\n

The archivist and the institution where the archive is physically located and controlled by is a final limitation category in the use of archival sources. In addition to the institution being swayed by policies dictated by capitalism, empire, white supremacy, and general exclusion, the individual is also shaped by this society. The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has a core values statement, as well as a code of ethics that \u201care intended to be used together to guide individuals who perform archival labor or who work in archival environment.\u201d [31]<\/a><\/span> \u00a0Though the SAA acknowledges that \u201carchival practices are never neutral,\u201d the archivist is still working within the structures of white supremacy and capitalism in the United States, indicating their vulnerability as an employee within an institution, but also their susceptibility to white supremacy and their devotion to the priorities of their employing state, corporation, or institution. The library profession overall is overwhelmingly white, at over 80%, and the number is even higher amongst members of the Rare Book and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the American Library Association (ALA).[32]<\/span><\/a> The archivist and their decisions, as Kellee Warren points out, can be limited by their institution: \u201cIf Black women are not recognized as worthwhile subjects in the archives, and presently not valued as knowers, how can they be accepted as library and archive professionals?\u201d[33]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Warren illustrates the limitations of the archive not only as a location of existence and research, but also for employment and fulfilled livelihood.<\/p>\n

The institutional archive requires targeted and consistent disruption. This form of the archive is useful to us in that it reveals a history of state and institutional priorities and goals of leadership. In our identification of the failures of formalized archival structures, the values of the state and the directives of institutions come into clear focus. It is in these limitations that we find sites of potential and possibility for a new form of structured archives. Yet, even in dreaming of archival alternatives, the knowledge of the institutional archive serves a purpose. This knowledge of these historical actions is useful in the creating, preserving, and caring of archival alternatives; if we burn the institutional archive down and refuse to learn from its failings, the roots of our alternatives will wither in the same sort of weather.[34]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Section II: Imagining and Empowering Archival Alternatives<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the face of such historical injustice, different forms of memory-constructing and memory-recording emerge. Archival alternatives are certainly distinct from institutional archives, but what is so resounding is that each articulation of an archival alternative is also distinct from another. The Lesbian HerStory Archives, housed in a Brooklyn brownstone and staffed by volunteers bears similarities to something like the Digital Transgender Archive or the Densho Project. Yet, their expressions are different. Archival alternatives are born out of different needs within small, often geographically localized communities. While some seek to \u201cbuild\u201d a past where they encounter an \u201cempty archive,\u201d others use archival alternatives to challenge and dissent from the nationally accepted historical canon.[35]<\/span><\/a> This act is arguably one of the most moving aspects of the capabilities of archival alternatives. Their purposes and their goals are determined by the community that needs them. While these archival alternatives offer a path of scholarly rejuvenation, of community strength and solidarity, these alternatives are still influenced by the same society of white supremacy that influences the institutional archive. Their methodologies and efforts are not without fault, yet these individuals, communities, and local organizations still seek to memorialize, to celebrate, and to remember on their own terms and in accordance with their own needs.<\/p>\n

In Monica Mu\u00f1oz Martinez\u2019s book The Injustice Never Leaves You<\/em>, she documents how the descendants of Mexican Americans murdered in acts of state-sanctioned violence affirm their family member\u2019s dignity and personhood and resist the racist and xenophobic narrative built and supported by the state. This resistance to state narratives of the past and false categorizations of Mexican Americans as \u201cbandits\u201d or \u201coutlaws\u201d serves a historical and present-day purpose.[36]<\/span><\/a> This connects individuals to their family members in a more realistic and tangible way, with the affect of familial connection playing a crucial role. Additionally, these vernacular history-makers, as Martinez terms them, are resisting the continued acceptance of these historical narratives as truth, pushing for public history and curricular changes that are reflective of the historical narrative that restores dignity and personhood to these individuals. Martinez also co-founded and works with Refusing to Forget, a non-profit devoted to bringing public awareness to the period of mass violence against ethnic Mexicans on the Texas-Mexico border. Refusing to Forget offers an accessible history of the violence against ethnic Mexicans in early twentieth-century Texas, but also hosts events and conferences, produces traveling exhibits, and advocates for historical markers.[37]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Martinez\u2019s work demonstrates how marginalized individuals can resist narratives of the state. While the work of this organization is again varied from Martinez and Refusing to Forget, the Densho Project is an archive that records the experiences of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. The purpose of Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project was to create a born-digital, video oral history project of Japanese Americans who experienced incarceration during World War II.[38]<\/span><\/a> The project has grown significantly since, and now includes a digital repository of photographs, letters, and other personal items, an encyclopedia of key people, places, and events related to incarceration, and the Densho Family History Program, which enables individuals to conduct genealogical research. The Densho Project has expanded its collections, priorities, and goals over time to match the needs and observed usage of the community they serve. While the National Archives and Records Administration has a digital lessons page on the history of Japanese American internment, the focuses of these two organizations are different. NARA tells a narrative of Japanese American incarceration determined by federal wartime policy decisions and material documents of a government\u2019s directions, while the Densho project discusses what incarceration meant and how it was experienced by Japanese Americans. The project further contextualizes Japanese American life prior to World War II and details the realities of life while incarcerated.[39]<\/span><\/a> Both archives have their purposes and values, but the Densho Project\u2019s existence fills a particular gap left in NARA\u2019s narrative by highlighting not the structural power imposing such xenophobia and racism, but how individuals dealt with these structural barriers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s relevant that the Densho Project, and many other archival alternatives, have strong online presences. Archival alternatives often seek increased accessibility to their collections and one way to accomplish this is to establish active and engaging social media presences. While social media can be a site for learning and has the potential to bring people new ideas, news, or perspectives they haven\u2019t previously considered, social media is also a location in which virtual communities can be enacted. For example, the Instagram account @blackarchives.co<\/a> was established in 2015 by Renata Cherlise and shares about one image or short home movie every day that \u201cbrings spotlight to the Black experience. Through an evolving visual exploration, Black Archives provides a dynamic accessibility to a Black past, present, and future.\u201d These images are sourced from institutional archives, such as the Library of Congress or Getty Images, among others, and are put online for users who otherwise might not have been able to access these materials.[40]<\/span><\/a> Similar in methodology and in their response to the needs of their community to @blackarchives.co, is the KyKy Archives, established by Siddisse Negero and Zora in 2020. The KyKy Archives is a digital site of magazines, articles, interviews, personal ads, and more, pulled from a variety of free, fair-use websites, that tell the quotidian stories of Black queer people in the late twentieth century and have produced a variety of projects, including the zine The Etymology of Black Lesbian Gender<\/em>. Negero and Zora are clear in their intentions and purpose: community access, affirmation of identity, and the beauty of historical and continued existence.[41]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Sometimes, archival alternatives include alternative forms of methodology and scholarly direction. Matthew Chin, in his work Queer Fractals<\/em>, utilizes \u201carchives of repair,\u201d a method in which individuals harmed by history can seek \u201cto redress the injuries of history,\u201d and discusses the archive\u2019s materialization as revealing \u201cless about the kinds of structures\u00a0 that existed in the past and more about the continuity of archival infrastructures.\u201d[42]<\/span><\/a> Chin\u2019s methodology exposes the shortcomings of the archive, but still seeks to use the tools of the archive in a new way, one that centers citizens and users over the government or prescribed national policy. Saidiya Hartman also uses alternative approaches to her source material, which detail the experiences of slavery most often through the lives of white enslavers, rather than the Black Africans they enslaved, particularly Black women and girls: \u201cThe archive is inseparable from the play of power that murdered Venus and her shipmate and exonerated the captain. And this knowledge brings us no closer to an understanding of the lives of two captive girls of the violence that destroyed them and named the ruin: Venus.\u201d Hartman critiques her archive for its lack and its presentation, but she still utilizes its potential in a \u201cdouble gesture [that] can be described as straining against the limits of the archive to write a cultural history of the captive, and at the same time, enacting the impossibility of representing the lives of the captives precisely through the process of narration.\u201d Hartman terms this approach \u201ccritical fabulation\u201d and further defines it as \u201ca history of an unrecoverable past; it is a narrative of what might have been or could have been; it is a history written with and against the archive.\u201d[43]<\/span><\/a> Hartman\u2019s work expresses one way in which the institutional archive can be repurposed for a different sort of counter-historical project; it ties together fact and evidence with creativity and \u201ca wide array of reading\u201d and makes the archive, not complete, but a bit more acknowledging and a bit more flexible.<\/p>\n

On the more artistic and creative side are the ways in which marginalized people use the lack of archival resources and representations as a motivation to create and invent<\/em> their own histories. Perhaps one of the finest examples of this act is Cheryl Dunye\u2019s 1996 film The Watermelon Woman<\/em>. In this film, Dunye both directs and plays the lead, who is seeking to find information about an early twentieth-century Black actress only termed \u201cThe Watermelon Woman\u201d in the films she stars in. The film follows Dunye\u2019s archival research process, the barriers she runs into in terms of access, and the excitement of finding just the information she was looking for.[44]<\/span><\/a> As Dunye learns more about \u201cThe Watermelon Woman,\u201d who is really named Fae Richards in the film, the two women\u2019s lives begin to parallel each other in terms of work, romance, and friendship.<\/p>\n

Shot in Dunye\u2019s own aesthetic of the documentary style, with details of the film \u201cstaged and styled for optimal realism,\u201d the film leans into the potential that this is a real story, that Dunye is actively researching \u201cThe Watermelon Woman\u201d and bringing the life of Fae Richards out of it.[45]<\/span><\/a> Yet, at the film\u2019s conclusion, Dunye revokes this reality: \u201cSometimes you have to create your own history. The Watermelon Woman is fiction.\u201d[46]<\/a> For Dunye, the archive is a source of both creative inspiration and affective disappointment; it straddles reality and potential. Dunye\u2019s conception of the archive is open to what the archive does <\/em>contain as well as what the archive could <\/em>contain. Dunye\u2019s The Watermelon Woman <\/em>is an assertion that while the story and the narrative of Fae Richards might be invented, Black queer histories\u2013and by extension, other histories of marginalized people\u2013are real and exist when \u201clooking backward\u201d and \u201clooking forward.\u201d[47]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Archival consciousness gives rise to archival practice and archival alternatives. The first step of archival creation or reorganization is the consciousness of what the archive is, how it functions, and what it still needs. Archival alternatives to state and institutional repositories are important reminders of the power and capabilities of empowered and motivated citizens, but these archives tend to be more vulnerable due to a lack of trained employees, funding, or even a designated physical location. Archival alternatives offer possibilities in terms of the subject of the archive, and in the handling of vulnerability or other barriers. Arguably one of its most important aspects, however, is its offering of alternative archival emotions; rather than frustration, anger, or dejection, archival alternatives offer potentials of joy, affirmation, and hope.<\/p>\n

Conclusion: Futures of Archival Consciousness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thinking about the \u201cform\u201d of the archive is, unfortunately, a very timely task. As cultural heritage institutions, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and higher education are undermined, threatened, and defunded by the Trump administration, the institutional archive takes on a threatening, insidious shadow of its past, and community archives offer a hopeful \u2013though worryingly vulnerable \u2013 alternative to the continued violence within the institutional archive. Beyond these reminders, the task of evaluating the archive of American national and cultural resources remains a crucial aspect of scholarly work and community engagement.<\/p>\n

The history of the archive\u2019s invention is deeply attached to the state, and to the concept of institutional power and supremacy. These instincts and decisions of the state then inform not only how historical narratives and \u201chistory\u201d are formed and expressed, but what tangible pieces of the past are considered historically worthwhile. The state\u2019s interest in the archive is inextricably wrapped up in notions of societal, legal, and economic power. To maintain control over a nation of people, the state uses the archive as a location of \u201cevidenced\u201d glory, success, and superiority, both over its own citizens and other nations. Beyond the archive as \u201cevidence,\u201d the state\u2019s archive is also a form of cultural control. To preserve and enforce a white supremacist, normative society, the state\u2019s recollection of American cultural history is purposefully exclusive, silencing, and violent.<\/p>\n

It is these actions and decisions of the state that have led many scholars in the social sciences, as well as the arts and library and information sciences, to critique the state archive and prescribed white supremacist processes and directives in the archive. These critiques attack the stability, form, and inherent trustworthiness of the archive; they seek to problematize blind acceptance of archival \u201ctruths\u201d and express not just how the archive has failed, but what\u2013and who\u2013suffers in its aftermath. It is not just the history that is limited, it is not just historical actors who are silenced, it is generations of scholarship and of people <\/em>who must live and build out of a purposefully attacked recorded past.<\/p>\n

Yet, both in spite of and because of these failures of the archive, opportunities for alternatives are brought to fruition by communities invested in their success and continued existence. These community archives greatly differ from one another, yet each seeks to fill a gap in the state and institutional archives that either omit aspects of the past or are purposeful misrepresentations of it. Archival alternatives offer communities and individuals opportunities to take history into their own hands and use their own power to work towards projects that interest them. Some people, in the case of those working with Refusing to Forget or the Densho Project, seek factual correction and accuracy about the violence perpetrated against their family members in Texas during the early twentieth century. Others seek to \u201cmake\u201d a past out of institutional archival lack and produce materials that give evidence of a past and a shared history. And still others seek creative and expressive outlets for the frustration of being silenced and excluded, while still holding room for the joy and potential sheer existence can offer.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this current moment is revealing yet another articulation of archive limitations: the unpredictable leaning and choices of the state, especially concerning cultural heritage and what is acceptable, let alone permissible<\/em>, as knowledge and as truth. \u201cThe power of the archive for all has not been abolished,\u201d and it cannot be abolished, it must be reorganized and restructured.[48]<\/span><\/a> The truth of resilience, resistance, and joy lingers in the absences of institutional archives, and rings out loudly in community alternatives. But this truth is grounded in continued existence and creation, in the survival of and compassion between we the people<\/em>. It is at this moment that we must embrace the formlessness of the archive and what it has a potential to be and to represent. From the digitized images on the Digital Transgender Archive to the oral histories with the Densho Project to the family albums and holiday cards in the basements and attics of our parents\u2019 homes, the archive can be, and is, bound by us; within them we seek learning and feeling, and each other, too.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/span><\/a> \u201cWhat Are Archives?\u201d Society of American Archivists, September 16, 2012, https:\/\/www2.archivists.org\/about-archives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/a> Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History<\/em> (Beacon Press, 2015), 2, 27.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/span><\/a> Achille Mbembe, \u201cThe Power of the Archive and its Limits,\u201d in Refiguring the Archive<\/em>, ed. Carolyn Hamilton, et al. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 23.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/span><\/a> Saidiya Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d Small Axe<\/em> 12, no. 2 (2008): 4.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/span><\/a> Marisa J. Fuentes, \u201cPower and Historical Figuring: Rachael Pringle Polgreen\u2019s Troubled Archive,\u201d Gender and History <\/em>22, no. 3 (2010): 566.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/span><\/a> Jacques Derrida,\u00a0Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression<\/em><\/a>, trans. Eric Prenowitz (University of Chicago Press, 1996), 5.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/span><\/a> Luciana Duranti, “Archives as place,”<\/a>\u00a0Archives & Manuscripts<\/em> 24, no. 2 (1996):\u00a0246; Randolph Head, “Knowing Like a State: The Transformation of Political Knowledge in Swiss Archives, 1450\u20131770,”\u00a0Journal of Modern History<\/em>, 75 (2003): 745\u201382.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/span><\/a> Mbembe, \u201cPower of the Archive,\u201d 26.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/span><\/a> \u201cNational Archives by the Numbers,\u201d National Archives and Records Administration, June 16, 2025, https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/about\/info\/national-archives-by-the-numbers.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/span><\/a> \u201cNational Archives History and Mission,\u201d National Archives and Records Administration, July 21, 2021, https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/about\/history\/about\/history\/history-and-mission<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/span><\/a> \u201cOur Organization,\u201d Smithsonian Institution, 2025, https:\/\/www.si.edu\/about\/administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/span><\/a> Andrew Limbong, \u201cLibrarian of Congress Firing Is Latest Move in Upheaval of U.S. Cultural Institutions,\u201d NPR News<\/em>, May 9, 2025, https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/05\/09\/nx-s1-5393737\/carla-hayden-fired-library-of-congress-trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 10.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/span><\/a> Anne Showstack Sassoon, “Hegemony,” in The Dictionary of Marxist Thought<\/em>, 2nd<\/sup> ed., ed. Tom Bottomore, et al. (Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992), 229\u2013231.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/span><\/a> Fuentes, \u201cPower and Historical Figuring,\u201d 564.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/span><\/a> Hartman\u201dVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 2; Mbembe, \u201cPower of the Archive,\u201d 19; Fuentes, \u201cPower and Historical Figuring,\u201d 580; Trouillot, Silencing the Past<\/em>, 5.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/span><\/a> Clare O\u2019Callaghan, \u201cErasure, Longing and Invention: The Lesbian\/Queer \u2018Archival Impulse,\u2019\u201d Medium<\/em>, April 15, 2021, https:\/\/cocallaghan.medium.com\/erasure-longing-and-invention-the-lesbian-queer-archival-impulse-87e4e672a9d0#_ftn39<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/span><\/a> Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination<\/em> (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 150, 198-199.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/span><\/a> Trouillot, Silencing the Past<\/em>, 26.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/span><\/a> Trouillot, Silencing the Past<\/em>, 28-29.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 2.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/span><\/a> Mbembe, \u201cPower of the Archive,\u201d 22.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/span><\/a> Trouillot, Silencing the Past<\/em>, xxiii.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 9.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 2.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/span><\/a> Fuentes, \u201cPower and Historical Figuring,\u201d 568.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/span><\/a> Fuentes, \u201cPower and Historical Figuring,\u201d 575.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 2.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/span><\/a> Livia Gershon, \u201cHurricane Ida Damages Whitney Plantation, Only Louisiana Museum to Focus on the Enslaved,\u201d Smithsonian Magazine<\/em>, September 3, 2021.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/span><\/a> Derrida, Archive Fever<\/em>, 63.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/span><\/a> \u201cSAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics,\u201d Society of American Archivists, August 2020, https:\/\/www2.archivists.org\/statements\/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics<\/a>. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

[32]<\/span><\/a> \u201cLibrary Professionals: Facts, Figures, And Union Membership \u2014 Department For Professional Employees, AFL-CIO,\u201d Department For Professional Employees, April 16, 2023. https:\/\/www.dpeaflcio.org\/factsheets\/library-professionals-facts-and-figures<\/a>; Julie Grob, \u201cRBMS, Special Collections, and the Challenge of Diversity: The Road to the Diversity Action Plan,\u201d RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage <\/em>4, no. 2 (2003), https:\/\/rbm.acrl.org\/index.php\/rbm\/article\/view\/219<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/span><\/a> Kellee E. Warren, \u201cWe Need These Bodies, But Not Their Knowledge: Black Women in the Archival Science Professions and Their Connection to the Archives of Enslaved Black Women in the French Antilles,” Library Trends<\/em>, 64 no. 4 (2016): 776-794, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1353\/lib.2016.0012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/span><\/a> Christina Sharpe, \u201cThe Weather,\u201d in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being<\/em> (Duke University Press, 2016), 102, 105-106.<\/p>\n

[35]<\/span><\/a> Clare O\u2019Callaghan, \u201cErasure, Longing and Invention: The Lesbian\/Queer \u2018Archival Impulse,\u2019\u201d Medium<\/em>, April 15, 2021, https:\/\/cocallaghan.medium.com\/erasure-longing-and-invention-the-lesbian-queer-archival-impulse-87e4e672a9d0#_ftn39<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[36]<\/span><\/a> Monica Mun\u0303oz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas <\/em>(Harvard University Press, 2020), 24, 282-84, 300.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/span><\/a> \u201cHome,\u201d Refusing to Forget, May 7, 2025, https:\/\/refusingtoforget.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/span><\/a> \u201cAbout Us – Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment,\u201d Densho Project, November 17, 2022, https:\/\/densho.org\/about-densho\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[39]<\/span><\/a> \u201cIntroduction to WWII Incarceration – Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment.\u201d Densho Project, November 10, 2021, https:\/\/densho.org\/learn\/introduction\/<\/a> ; National Archives and Records Administration, \u201cJapanese-American Incarceration during World War II,\u201d March 22, 2024. https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/education\/lessons\/japanese-relocation#:~:text=In%20February%201942%2C%20just%20two,the%20internment%20of%20Japanese%20Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[40]<\/span><\/a> Black Archives (@Blackarchives.co), Instagram and LinkTree, accessed May 20, 2025.<\/p>\n

[41]<\/span><\/a> Yaya\u00a0Azariah Clarke, \u201cKYKY Archives Preserves the History of Black Queer People, Places and Culture,\u201d It\u2019s Nice That<\/em>, November 7, 2023, https:\/\/www.itsnicethat.com\/articles\/zora-siddisse-kyky-archives-digital-project-071123<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[42]<\/span><\/a> Matthew Chin, Queer Fractals <\/em>(Duke University Press, 2024), 17-18, 61-62.<\/p>\n

[43]<\/span><\/a> Hartman, \u201cVenus in Two Acts,\u201d 11-12.<\/p>\n

[44]<\/span><\/a> Cheryl Dunye, dir., The Watermelon Woman<\/em> (First Run Features, 1996).<\/p>\n

[45]<\/span><\/a> \u201cZoe Leonard: The Fae Richards Photo Archive,\u201d Whitney Museum of American Art, accessed May 20, 2025, \u00a0https:\/\/whitney.org\/collection\/works\/11353<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[46]<\/span><\/a> Dunye, The Watermelon Woman<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[47]<\/span><\/a> O\u2019Callaghan, \u201cErasure, Longing and Invention.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruth Kramer is a PhD student in History at the University of Virginia. Her research interests broadly include the 20th Century United States, particularly periodical and magazine cultures, archive-building methodologies in marginalized communities, and lesbian-feminist community-building efforts in the American South and Midwest. She has also researched representations, embodiments, and enactments of American masculinity in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}