Records and their imaginaries: imagining the impossible, making possible the imagined

Gilliland, Anne J.; Caswell, Michelle

doi:10.1007/s10502-015-9259-z

Cited by 70 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Gilliland and Caswell use the impossible archival imaginary to explain 'how archival imaginaries may work in situations where the archive and its hoped-for contents are absent or forever unattainable' (Gilliland and Caswell 2016).…”

Section: Imagined Records and Impossible Archival Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radical empathy, the imaginary and affect in (post)colonial records: how to break out of international stalemates on displaced archives

Lowry

2019

Arch Sci

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As the European powers appeared to withdraw from their colonies, they often took with them records that were subsequently claimed by the governments of the newly independent countries. These records are post-colonial examples of displaced archives. In recent history, the problem of displaced archives has been approached as a legal problem, and this has produced relatively few resolutions to archival claims. This article approaches displaced archives from a new perspective, applying theories and concepts recently introduced into archival theory by Michelle Caswell, Anne Gilliland and Marika Cifor: affect, imagined records and impossible archival imaginaries, and radical empathy. This article will show that these concepts, which have been deployed to decolonise diverse aspects of archival work, could also help resolve a persistent international problem, which is both technical and geopolitical/ diplomatic. This article will argue that archival theory, as recently influenced by Caswell, Gilliland and Cifor, demands a significantly changed approach to archival displacement, even as it sometimes arrives at established positions on repatriation and access. This change involves opening up dialogues about displaced archives to considerations beyond the juridical or geopolitical, to form richer understandings of archival displacement and its effects on individuals and communities. The article challenges individual archivists to apply the concepts of affect, imagined records and impossible archival imaginaries, and radical empathy in their work with colonial records as a component of decolonial archival praxis, and finally proposes a critical theorisation of displaced archives.

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Section: Imagined Records and Impossible Archival Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radical empathy, the imaginary and affect in (post)colonial records: how to break out of international stalemates on displaced archives

Lowry

2019

Arch Sci

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“…Gilliland and Caswell argue that these "imagined records" recognize the power of the archive and the record as legible forms of evidence. 140 What petitioners to the state and to the archive long for-this presence of longing-is the site of "impossible archival imaginaries. "…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Appraising Newness: Whiteness, Neoliberalism & the Building of the Archive for New Poetry

Kim

2017

JournalCritLIS

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The Archive for New Poetry (ANP) at the University of California San Diego was founded with the specific intention of collecting alternative, small press publications and acquiring the manuscripts of contemporary new poets. The ANP's stated collection development priority was to acquire alternative, non-mainstream, emerging, "experimental" poets as they were writing and alive, and to provide a space in which their papers could live, along with recordings of their poetry readings. In this article, I argue that through racialized understandings of innovation and new, whiteness positions the ANP's collection 1 I would like to thank Michelle Caswell for inviting me to be part of this special issue and for being a formidable source of knowledge and inspiration. Harryette Mullen and Ryan Wong generously shared their ideas and histories with me.

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“…What digital archivists also must remember is that only by problematizing uninterrogated-essentialized representations of minoritized communities, digital archives can be a home for contradictory, contingent, counter-narratives emerging from marginalized spaces and subalternized voices [37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. And to do so, there must be a strong sense of commitment toward self-interrogation, which will protect digital archivists from falling into a self-congratulatory snare that traps every possibility of further evolution and transformation.…”

Section: Ux and Participatory Design Approach And Uxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building Digital Archive through Collaborative UX Research

Poudyal

2020

Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication

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When digital archives are increasingly becoming a space for knowledge production, construction, consumption, maintenance, dissemination, and amplification, the necessary questions to be interrogated are: Who has access to write, participate, and construct pasts, memories, and collective public imaginations through these digital domains? How can the ones who have access to engage in epistemological performances through digital archives make these domains a space to deconstruct essentialized identity categories forced upon the Other by the (hetero)patriarchal and/or imperial-colonial Self? And how can participatory design frameworks contribute to that? Triggered by these questions, my critical digital archival research project attempts at finding theories-praxes to make dialogic rooms in digital archives to build a relationship with historically, structurally, and/or systematically minoritized communities and their distinctive, transitory, plural, and conjunctural narratives. This paper introduces my ongoing doctoral project of the critical digital archive where I am documenting and theorizing a digital archive of my street photography in Nepal that I am building through participatory design frameworks with South Asian communities. In this paper, I offer a look at how the complexities and obstacles faced during UX research can enable technical communicators to rupture the essentialist foundation of identity constructions of Non-Western communities. My paper aims to communicate the necessity of conducting UX research through participatory-design frameworks not only to find answers to design technology but to see a way of completely subverting epistemic violence of colonial discourses through the "failure" to find answers. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Interaction design; Interaction design process and methods; Participatory design.

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Records and their imaginaries: imagining the impossible, making possible the imagined

Cited by 70 publications

References 18 publications

Radical empathy, the imaginary and affect in (post)colonial records: how to break out of international stalemates on displaced archives

Radical empathy, the imaginary and affect in (post)colonial records: how to break out of international stalemates on displaced archives

Appraising Newness: Whiteness, Neoliberalism & the Building of the Archive for New Poetry

Building Digital Archive through Collaborative UX Research

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