"The archive is not a divine warehouse containing everything that mattered. It is a collection of human decisions, limited budgets, institutional priorities, cataloguing systems, dust and at least one box nobody has opened since 1974."
Speaking as an archivist, this (although I take exception to the dust; most archives aren't dusty!) These days collections policies usually aim for a representative approach and to try at least to fill in gaps, but it can only ever be an imperfect sampling. I personally work with the records of children and young people in the care and court systems, including girls, which I hope is doing something to give the people concerned access to their own history, at least.
I'm still slightly salty that my mum didn't ask me before she threw out her collection of Sixties "American Girl" magazines, sent to her by a cousin, which when I was a teenager myself were a fascinating time capsule of a youth culture which was not my own. I'm sure they had inherent biases aplenty, but I'd have kept them!
The biases can be such an interesting part of the archive too!
and yes, I will say most archives are not dusty, but I’ve had some EXPERIENCES in the back rooms where the stuff that hasn’t been processed yet lives 😂
Coal dust. Shards of glass from a broken framed picture someone had shoved in there. Plastic folders that had deteriorated and gone sticky. Not to mention rusty staples and fossilized rubber bands...
I cannot say enough how much I LOVE READING YOUR ESSAYS. I share them with my daughters, my husband, anyone who will listen. Thank you for bringing your voice to the table.
You are welcome! My oldest kiddo looked at the title and said "omg Mom that sounds like what you say all the time about english class!" and I laughed. She's not wrong.
I disliked history classes through school. Felt like rote memorization of wars and presidents with no discussion of any of it. Didn’t enjoy it at all until I returned to college from a 6 year hiatus is ‘81 and took a class entitled “women in American history from 1627 to the present.” As I learned about daily life and cares (black womanhood still missing) I finally had context to understand culture issues and brought history to life for me. It’s so important for everyone to realize that we are not the most intelligent people ever, the pinnacle of everything, and that everyone before us is a two dimensional caricature. A childlike view of the past that many never get past.
I’m 69 years old. Spent years in the Colorado Rockies with no radio reception at home. I know nothing of Taylor Swift’s music, nor Beyoncé’s, or much of anyone since 1989. I am aware of the cultural phenomenon of their music, and would never deny its importance. I don’t understand why people do. I don’t need to love or hate it to know it mattered. And I was aware of Jackson, first hearing his music in my junior high school days. However you feel about the person, what he did mattered.
Attitudes of the populace create the environment for the things we’ve been taught matter. How those things could happen is found there.
Thank you 🙏🏽 this is a wonderful addition to my personal research to look at who determines value (not academic for publishing). I just love research and discovery and putting the puzzle pieces together in a perhaps slightly different way. It is my way of staying curious and perhaps extracting meaning. I am always amazed at things like your article that come into view when I stay aware of that research question. Thank you again I feel so blessed.
Learning how to create the list of things that hasn’t appeared from on high (IQ and achievement tests are my personal bugaboo) ought to be a major function of history: learning the history of how history is put together should probably be an intro course in high school.
A well-rounded approach: look beyond geopolitical history, read popular culture archaeologically to understand human motivations in relation to our own lives (it's what you do). This is a fascinating way to interpret history. In that context, the "pop music TikTok" is an artifact of our culture. Thank you for this framing.
Music is powerful. It can take you back to a moment in your personal history with just one line. Music teaches us so much about what people were thinking, what they cared about, and how they lived their lives. I feel that a lot could be learned about our history by studying music and then what was happening around that music. I would probably try to do that if I was teaching history.
This is the same mechanism I keep running into in somatic and community work, whatever gets labeled “serious” is usually just whatever the people already in power decided to keep records of. The body’s own history works the same way, the trauma responses, the coping patterns, the ways people survived, rarely get written down as knowledge either, because the people living them were never considered the ones producing knowledge in the first place. “The archive is not a divine warehouse”… that is a sexy line that says so much and expands so far beyond the academic world.
"The archive is not a divine warehouse containing everything that mattered. It is a collection of human decisions, limited budgets, institutional priorities, cataloguing systems, dust and at least one box nobody has opened since 1974."
Speaking as an archivist, this (although I take exception to the dust; most archives aren't dusty!) These days collections policies usually aim for a representative approach and to try at least to fill in gaps, but it can only ever be an imperfect sampling. I personally work with the records of children and young people in the care and court systems, including girls, which I hope is doing something to give the people concerned access to their own history, at least.
I'm still slightly salty that my mum didn't ask me before she threw out her collection of Sixties "American Girl" magazines, sent to her by a cousin, which when I was a teenager myself were a fascinating time capsule of a youth culture which was not my own. I'm sure they had inherent biases aplenty, but I'd have kept them!
The biases can be such an interesting part of the archive too!
and yes, I will say most archives are not dusty, but I’ve had some EXPERIENCES in the back rooms where the stuff that hasn’t been processed yet lives 😂
Ah, the stuff that hasn't been processed... well, I make no claims there... ;) Mine is at least all in boxes, but I've seen some things.
Dust bunnies the size of Labradors, I swear.
Coal dust. Shards of glass from a broken framed picture someone had shoved in there. Plastic folders that had deteriorated and gone sticky. Not to mention rusty staples and fossilized rubber bands...
I cannot say enough how much I LOVE READING YOUR ESSAYS. I share them with my daughters, my husband, anyone who will listen. Thank you for bringing your voice to the table.
Thank you! That means so much!
You are welcome! My oldest kiddo looked at the title and said "omg Mom that sounds like what you say all the time about english class!" and I laughed. She's not wrong.
I disliked history classes through school. Felt like rote memorization of wars and presidents with no discussion of any of it. Didn’t enjoy it at all until I returned to college from a 6 year hiatus is ‘81 and took a class entitled “women in American history from 1627 to the present.” As I learned about daily life and cares (black womanhood still missing) I finally had context to understand culture issues and brought history to life for me. It’s so important for everyone to realize that we are not the most intelligent people ever, the pinnacle of everything, and that everyone before us is a two dimensional caricature. A childlike view of the past that many never get past.
I’m 69 years old. Spent years in the Colorado Rockies with no radio reception at home. I know nothing of Taylor Swift’s music, nor Beyoncé’s, or much of anyone since 1989. I am aware of the cultural phenomenon of their music, and would never deny its importance. I don’t understand why people do. I don’t need to love or hate it to know it mattered. And I was aware of Jackson, first hearing his music in my junior high school days. However you feel about the person, what he did mattered.
Attitudes of the populace create the environment for the things we’ve been taught matter. How those things could happen is found there.
Thank you 🙏🏽 this is a wonderful addition to my personal research to look at who determines value (not academic for publishing). I just love research and discovery and putting the puzzle pieces together in a perhaps slightly different way. It is my way of staying curious and perhaps extracting meaning. I am always amazed at things like your article that come into view when I stay aware of that research question. Thank you again I feel so blessed.
Learning how to create the list of things that hasn’t appeared from on high (IQ and achievement tests are my personal bugaboo) ought to be a major function of history: learning the history of how history is put together should probably be an intro course in high school.
A well-rounded approach: look beyond geopolitical history, read popular culture archaeologically to understand human motivations in relation to our own lives (it's what you do). This is a fascinating way to interpret history. In that context, the "pop music TikTok" is an artifact of our culture. Thank you for this framing.
Music is powerful. It can take you back to a moment in your personal history with just one line. Music teaches us so much about what people were thinking, what they cared about, and how they lived their lives. I feel that a lot could be learned about our history by studying music and then what was happening around that music. I would probably try to do that if I was teaching history.
This is the same mechanism I keep running into in somatic and community work, whatever gets labeled “serious” is usually just whatever the people already in power decided to keep records of. The body’s own history works the same way, the trauma responses, the coping patterns, the ways people survived, rarely get written down as knowledge either, because the people living them were never considered the ones producing knowledge in the first place. “The archive is not a divine warehouse”… that is a sexy line that says so much and expands so far beyond the academic world.