Reparative Description, History, and Archives
Through the ongoing process of the study of history and the collection of historical documents, the understanding of what is acceptable description has changed many times. As such, many historical descriptions use terms that have been recognized as unacceptable and harmful. The mandate of archivists and historians, as curators of this information, is to make it accessible to people and to tailor the description and interpretation of documents and events in ways that mitigate continued harm. While we cannot undo the past, and cannot and will not try to rewrite what happened or change the language used on the documents, we can and do seek to be more mindful of the language we use going forward when describing historically marginalized groups and documents referring to them. This process is known as “reparative description” and guides the ethical choices made in description of historically marginalized groups.
“Reparative description” is defined by the Society of American Archivists as “remediation of practices or data that exclude, silence, harm, or mischaracterize marginalized people in the data created or used by archivists to identify or characterize archival resources”, and calls for people working with documents to recognize the impact that their own words have on the interpretation of a record and the harm that can come from word choice.(1)
Two communities that have been historically underrepresented and misrepresented in the historical record are African American people and Indigenous people. One legacy of colonialism and enslavement is the language we use to categorize and describe artifacts. This language often centers the enslaver’s voice over the personhood of the enslaved, and privileges colonial perspectives while ignoring indigenous voices and ideas. As keepers of the historical record, and the people trusted to describe processes and events in history, archivists and historians are tasked to present history in ways that show the voices that have been ignored for so long and describe the items in ways that center the personhood of all parties involved.(2)
There are many narratives in history that have arisen from description that removes agency and personhood from different communities; the idea of Terra Nullius, ideas of paternalistic colonialism or outright ignoring of indigenous displacement, the idea of the paternalistic slaveholder, and many other historical misconceptions and fabrications that have come from the privileging of white colonist voices in history. Through reparative description, we attempt to correct these misconceptions and shed light on histories and perspectives that have been ignored and erased.
At the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum, we have been working to expand our tour and our research to include what records we have of the enslaved people on the property rather than falling into the tradition of ignoring and forgetting the enslaved labor that underpins so much of our history. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, records of enslaved people and other disenfranchised persons are rare, having been considered unimportant for so many generations. Our work now is on finding these documents and bringing them to light.
Related to this is the process of history-making through archival appraisal and selection. With the number of records that have been and continue to be created, there is a limited space and budget for caring for and stewarding these materials. There are quite a few factors that work into what of these records are kept and added. The first moment of appraisal is the choice of a person to keep a document or record, to decide that it is important to them rather than destroy it. Many records are lost due to this well before they can be considered for archiving. The next point is the decision to donate the records to an archives. In order for this to happen, either that person, or their family, must consider the records to be worth something and worth saving. Many more records are lost here either because certain groups do not realize that archiving is an option or do not believe, due to historical precedent, that the archives would agree. Items that pass both of these stages must then go through processing and appraisal, at which point an archivist goes through the collection and makes decisions about what is worth keeping, what is valuable to history, what is important. It is this point of the process that is most vulnerable to abuse. Though archivists and historians, by and large, no longer hide behind the mask of impartiality and try to recognise their biases, biases have and continue to affect what items are kept and preserved. The cycle of privileging of wealthy white men’s voices enforces their power over the narratives told and rejecting, ignoring, and destroying resources that focus on other groups that are considered “less important” to history leads to continued donation from wealthy white men who see themselves reflected in archives, and a skepticism of archives among marginalized communities whose records and voices have been rejected again and again.
While the harm that has been done in the past cannot be undone and should not be trivialized, what archivists and historians can do is describe it in such a way that does not cause further harm by playing into harmful and inaccurate narratives of history. This reparative work is central to the archival and historical professions as they exist today, and will be a long and difficult process of redescription without loss of context.
Notes
Amanda Wick, Review of Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, by Dennis Meissner. American Archivist 83, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2020): 204–208.
Alexis A. Antracoli et al., essay, in Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-Racist Description Resources (Philadelphia, PA: Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group, 2019).
Citations
Antracoli, Alexis A., Annalise Berdini, Kelly Bolding, Faith Charlton, Amanda Ferrara, Valencia Johnson, and Katy Rawdon. Essay. In Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-Racist Description Resources. Philadelphia, PA: Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group, 2019.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, and Hazel V. Carby. Silencing the Past: Power and the production of history. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2015.
Wick, Amanda. Review of Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, by Dennis Meissner. American Archivist 83, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2020): 204–208. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-83.1.204.
“Reparative Description.” SAA Dictionary: reparative description. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/reparative-description.html.