If I speak –
If in this minute, I prise open the spines
of old texts and extract the root
Mirror it ten-fold to consequence and stymy
it in time – have I caught history?
Like one might catch a cold?
Is it upon me, the malign epic,
the stentorian saga?
By my naming do the cross-hatching scars
fall free and the wound burst red
Or can I forget all this – the measuring of
the skull, the survey of the plantation,
the
reading of the will – the neat precision
and
incision of prejudice
And leave it be – let us all remain
The eternal Federico?
Explanation:
Though the day-to-day of the archivist is to do with details – i.e. deciding between the various bird families that a sketch at the archives might belong to – this poem casts that work against the shadowy broader significance of what role archives play as repositories of information in society.
The tasks that guide the storage of collective memory of culture involve some interesting and delicate negotiations. Material may often contain histories of discriminated communities, such as indigenous people whose title to land has not been acknowledged or Dalit and Adivasi assistants who contributed significant labour to scientific and creative enterprise without recognition. Practices of cultural secrecy and naming, may complicate the work of the archivist, who at once aspires to contribute to public access to information, but not in such a way as to infringe on prior rights.
Material may contain references to sensitive episodes of violence or personal discrimination, including outdated or offensive language, stereotypes, and prejudices. Third parties apart from the donor may find themselves mentioned in a way that may cause them pain or infringe on their privacy or public image. Such considerations may guide access restrictions and sensitivity parameters, but also require the describing archivist to use language judiciously and in a fair and inclusive manner – to resist the urge to editorialise or sensationalise, while acknowledging the material’s propensity to cause harm.
Archivists interface with different regimes of governing principles. These include principles of organisation, such as respecting the documents’ origin (or ‘provenance’ in more technical terms) and original order.
But as the scope of archival work increases, one might find oneself interacting with ethical guidelines: ‘do no harm’, conflict sensitivity, CARE principles for Indigenous Data Governance, rights to privacy and erasure. These rights may often warrant secrecy or limited access. Other rights such as Right to Information and ‘Dealing with the Past’ redressal mechanisms are assisted by comprehensive documentation and preservation. A mislabeled or incomplete record may result in information loss. Nevertheless, while the archivist grapples with the hard-to-describe untitled, undated record, they may not substitute their own formulations and guesswork. In such a case, one may well let the record ‘be Federico’, a relative unknown but marked as important.
On such questions, the archivist chews a thoughtful pencil and is grateful that the eraser exists, so that their actions, though made in line with the best practices and principles available to them, can be altered in light of future wisdom.
References and further reading:
1. Federico meme, @thesurrealbank, available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz2q7YCNohs/?hl=en
2. See Kolowratnik, N. V., The Language of Secret Proof: Indigenous Truth and Representation (MIT Press, 2020) for discussions of cultural secrecy and proof in Indigenous contexts.
3. Guiding Principles for Safe Havens for Archives at Risk, International Council on Archives, available at: https://www.ica.org/app/uploads/2023/12/guiding_principles_for_safe_havens_for_archives_at_risk_copyright_creative_commons_cc_by_nc_4.0_ica.pdf
4. CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, available at: https://www.gida-global.org/care Archives, Ethics and the Law in India: A Guidebook for Archivists in India, available at: https://ethics-law.archives.ncbs.res.in/
5. Society of American Archivists, SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics, available at: https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics
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