Archival Traces

The conversation over archives and silences continues to grow. The latest and perhaps most provocative intervention came from Thavolia Glymph’s AHA presidential address, where she identified archives as “spectacularly boisterous.” I have a lot of reactions to that address, which I’ll explore another time. But I it sent me back to a book I read with my group on comparative empire which looked at archival sources as remnants in the archives. Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide is a work that is equally powerful and haunting. In it Elyse Semerdjian looks at the markings on women’s bodies which signified them as survivors of genocide, and thinks through what it means to write about Armenian suffering through sources that the Turkish state continues to retain custody over. The book makes an interesting parallel with the conversations about slavery’s archive. It is, after all, the institutions of enslavers that continue to house records about enslaved people, frequently with metadata that makes finding enslaved people all the more daunting.

There are, to be sure, many differences between the history of slavery and the history of twentieth century genocide. Not the least of which is that a global humanitarian campaign to halt the genocide existed, even if it had little impact. And, of course, there is the ineffective work of the League of Nations to contend with, which had no counterpart in the eighteenth century international legal landscape. Still, I’ve found it useful to think about the fingerprints left in the archive, the impressed memories that can serve as sources, and the custodial nature of archives that makes for fruitful comparison.

My own sense for now is that as the conversation bout slavery and the archive continues, reading wider and globally might be a good next step for all of us.