Neutrality is a drag.

Archives should be tools for liberation. We are a group of archivists and archival studies scholars who are tired of seeing the same oppressive ideologies, structures, and tactics play out in both the historic records we steward and in the newspaper headlines we read every day. We are trying to move beyond the disjuncture between the frantic pace of inundating crisis and the long game of archival slow-time. We want to use archival records to learn past strategies and get inspiration to enact the structural change we need now.

 

We are exhausted by the use of professionalism as an excuse for political inaction. We are committed to interrupting cycles of oppression because of and not despite our professional ethical commitments and identities. We believe we can use archives, archival labor, and archival theory for human liberation.

 

We have created Archivists Against History Repeating Itself in order to acknowledge, address, and repair the harms done by white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, and capitalism (an incomplete list for sure!) and their various intersections in and through records and archives. With this site, we hope to use ideas, activities, and actions to imagine and enact a more just world.