Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Affecting relations: introducing affect theory to archival discourse

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Archival Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

An engagement with affect theory is a significant way in which dimensions of social justice for the archival field can be elucidated, fleshed out, and ultimately confronted. Affect theory provides tools for undertaking substantive analyses of power and its abuses in order to better perform, more critically understand, and challenge and reconceptualize archival functions and concerns in support of social justice principles and goals. In this paper, I provide an introduction for the archival field to affect theory, arguing that the contributions of Ann Cvetkovich, Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant can critically expose, complicate and further work toward social justice in three areas of archival concern. First, drawing on Cvetkovich’s work, I argue that affective value should be surfaced and explicitly applied as an appraisal criterion. Second, extending Ahmed’s work on pain and witnessing to the archival realm and building on arguments that archivists are witnesses (Punzalan in Community archives: the shaping of memory, Facet, London, 187–219, 2009; Caswell in Archiving the unspeakable: Silence, memory and the photographic record in Cambodia. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2014a), I argue that archivists are deeply implicated in webs of affective relations. Such relations require the archival field to expand its ethical orientation to address considerations of emotional justice. Finally, I build out of Berlant’s work to call out, define and analyze a different kind of archival relation, an affective investment in and attachment to damaging neoliberalist ideologies that shape the conditions of contemporary archival work.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adam Matthew. (n.d.) Jewish life in America, c1654–1954. Sage. http://www.amdigital.co.uk/m-collections/collection/jewish-life-in-america-c1654-1954. Accessed 29 April 2015

  • Ahmed S (2004) The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed S (2006) Queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed S (2010) The promise of happiness. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson K, Smith SJ (2001) Editorial: emotional geographies. Trans Inst Br Geogr 26:7–10

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Archives Direct. Women in the National Archives. Adam Matthew http://www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/WTNA. Accessed 29 April 2015

  • Berlant L (1998) Intimacy: a special issue. Crit Inq 24(2):281–288

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berlant L (ed) (2004) Compassion: the culture and politics of an emotion. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlant L (2006) Cruel optimism. differ 17(1):20–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berlant L (2011) Cruel optimism. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berlant L (2012) On her book cruel optimism. Rorotoko.com. 5 June http://rorotoko.com/interview/20120605_berlant_lauren_on_cruel_optimism/?page=4. Accessed 29 April 2015

  • Brennan T (2004) The transmission of affect. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

    Google Scholar 

  • Brothman B (1991) Orders of value: probing the theoretical terms of archival practice. Archivaria 32:78–100

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown E, Phu T (2014) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bulter J (2004) Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler J (2009) Frames of war: when life is grievable. Verso, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Canadian Council of Archives (2012) Memorandum on the elimination of the National Archival Development Program. http://www.cdncouncilarchives.ca/CCAFactSheet_v1.2Updated_EN.pdf. Accessed 9 Aug 2015

  • Caswell M (2014a) Archiving the unspeakable: silence, memory and the photographic record in Cambodia. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison

    Google Scholar 

  • Caswell M (2014b) Towards a survivor-centered approach to records documenting human rights abuse: lessons from community archives. Arch Sci 14(3–4):307–322

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caswell M, Cifor M (2016) From human rights to feminist ethics: Radical empathy in the archives. Archivaria 81

  • Cifor M (2015) Presence, absence, and Victoria’s hair: affect and embodiment in trans archives. TSQ: Transgender Stud Q 2.2:645–649

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clough PT, Halley J (eds) (2007) The affective turn. Duke University Press, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook T (2000) Archival science and postmodernism: New formulations for old concepts. Arch Sci 1:3–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox R (2002) The end of collecting: towards a new purpose for archival appraisal. Arch Sci 2:287–309

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cvetkovich A (2002) In the archives of lesbian feelings: documentary and popular culture. Camera Obscura 49(1):107–147

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cvetkovich A (2003) An archive of feeling: trauma, sexuality and lesbian public cultures. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cvetkovich A (2012) Depression: a public feeling. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cvetkovich A (2014) Photographing objects as queer archival practice. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 273–296

    Google Scholar 

  • Dever M (2010) Greta Garbo’s foot, or sex, socks, and letters. Aust Feminist Stud 25:163–173

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dever M, Newman S, Vickery A (2009) The intimate archive: Journeys through private papers. National Library of Australia, Canberra

    Google Scholar 

  • Drabinski J (2014) Slavery, memory, property. 23 Jan. http://jdrabinski.com/slavery-memory-property. Accessed 15 April 2015

  • Duff WM, Flinn A, Suurtamm KE, Wallace DA (2013) Social justice impact of archives: a preliminary investigation. Arch Sci 13(4):317–348

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunbar AW (2006) Introducing critical race theory to archival discourse: getting the conversation started. Arch Sci 6:109–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eichhorn K (2014) The archival turn in feminism: outrage in order. Temple University Press, Philadelphia

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis D, Tucker I, Harper D (2013) The affective atmospheres of surveillance. Theory Psychol 23(6):716–731

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eng D (2014) The feeling of photography, the feeling of kinship. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 325–348

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans J, McKemmish S, Daniels E, McCarthy G (2015) Self-determination and archival autonomy: advocating activism. Arch Sci 1–32. doi:10.1007/s10502-015-9244-6

  • Farge A (2013) Allure of the archives. (T Scott-Railton, trans.). Yale University Press, New Haven

  • Flinn A (2011) Archival activism: independent and community-led archives, radical public history and the heritage professions. Inter Actions 7(2)

  • Freeman E (2010) Time binds: queer temporalities, queer histories. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ghosh D (2006) National narratives and the politics of miscegenation: Britain and India. In: Burton A (ed) Archives stories: fact, fiction and the writing of history. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 27–44

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gilliland A (2011) Neutrality, social justice and the obligations of archival education and educators in the twenty-first century. Arch Sci 11(3–4):193–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilliland AJ (2014a) Conceptualizing 21st-century archives. Society of American Archivists, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilliland AJ (2014b) Moving past: probing the agency and affect of recordkeeping in individual and community lives in post-conflict Croatia. Arch Sci 14:249–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilliland AJ (2015) Studying affect and its relationship to the agency of archivists since the Yugoslav Wars. In: Cox RJ et al (eds) Studies in archival education and research: selected papers from the 2014 AERI conference. Litwin Press, Sacramento

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilliland AJ, McKemmish S (2004) Building an infrastructure for archival research. Arch Sci 3(4):149–199

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gopinath G (2010) Archive, affect and the everyday: queer diasporic revisions. In: Staiger J, Cvetkovich A, Reynolds AM (eds) Political emotions. Routledge, New York, pp 165–192

    Google Scholar 

  • Gorton K (2007) Theorizing emotion and affect: feminist engagements. Feminist Theory 8(3):333–348

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregg M, Seigworth GJ (2010) An inventory of shimmers. In: Gregg M, Seigworth GJ (eds) The affect theory reader. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 1–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Guerin F, Hallas R (2007) The image and the witness: trauma, memory and visual culture. Wallflower Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Halilovich H (2014) Reclaiming erased lives: archives, records and memories in post-war Bosnia and the Bosnian diaspora. Arch Sci 14:231–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harding J, Pribram ED (2004) Losing our cool? Following Williams and Grossberg on emotions. Cult Studs 18(6):863–883

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris V (2001) Seeing (in) blindness: South Africa, archives and passion for justice. http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/LibArchMus/Arch/Harris_V_Freedom_of_Information_in_SA_Archives_for_justice.pdf. Accessed 13 April 2015

  • Harris V (2002) The archival sliver: power, memory and archives in South Africa. Arch Sci 2(1–2):63–86

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris V (2012) Genres of the trace. Arch Manus 40(3):147–157

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris V (2014) Antonyms of our remembering. Arch Sci 14(3–4):215–229

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hartman S (2008) Lose your mother: a journey along the Atlantic slave trade route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey D (2007) Neoliberalism and creative destruction. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610. NAFTA and beyond: Alternate perspectives in the study of global trade and development

  • Held V (2014) The Ethics of care as normative guidance: comment on Gilligan. J Soc Philos 45(1):107–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch M, Spitzer L (2014) School photos and their afterlives. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 252–272

    Google Scholar 

  • Holland S (2000) Raising the dead: readings of death and (black) subjectivity. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997) Bringing them home: report of the national inquiry into the separation of aboriginal and Torres strait islander children from their families. Australian Government Publishing Service, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Jimerson R (2007) Archives for all: professional responsibility and social justice. Am Arch 70(2):252–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jimerson R (2009) Archives power. Society of American Archivists, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy R (2004) The affective work of Stolen generations testimony: from the archives to the classroom. Biogr 27(1):48–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim S (2011) Personal digital archives: preservation of documents, preservation of self. PhD Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin

  • Kormedy L (2007) Changes in archives’ philosophy and functions at the turn of the 20th/21st centuries. Arch Sci 7:167–177

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kwan MP (2007) Affecting geospatial technologies: towards a feminist politics of emotion. Prof Geogr 59(1):22–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Linker M (2014) Intellectual empathy: critical thinking for social justice. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

    Google Scholar 

  • Love H (2009) Feeling backward: loss and the politics of queer history. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • MacNeil HM, Mak B (2007) Constructions of authenticity. Lib Q 56(1):26–52

    Google Scholar 

  • Manalansan MF (2014) The ‘stuff’ of archives: mess, migration, and queer lives. Rad Hist Rev 120:94–107. doi:10.1215/01636545-2703742

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mankekar P (2012) Erotics, transnational media, and commodity affect. In: Mankekar P, Schein L (eds) Transnational erotics: Media and the production of ‘Asia’. Duke University Press, Durham

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mankekar P (2015) Unsettling India: affect, temporality, transnationality. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Masinde S, Rajan R (2008) Aluka: developing digital scholarly collections from and about Africa. Conference on Electronic Publishing and Dissemination Procs

  • Matthews S (2013) ‘The trophies of their wars’: affect and encounter at the Canadian war Museum. Mus Manag Curatorship 28(3):1–17

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy F (2011) Archives of sorrow: an exploration of Australia’s Stolen Generations and their journey into the past. Hist and Anthr 22(4):481–495

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • National Archives and Records Administration (2014) Strategic plan 2014-2018. http://www.archives.gov/about/plans-reports/strategic-plan/2014/nara-strategic-plan-2014-2018.pdf. Accessed 29 April 2015

  • Navaro-Yashin Y (2007) Make-believe papers, legal forms and the counterfeit: affective interactions between documents and people in Britain and Cyprus. Anth Theory 7(1):79–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nesmith T (2002) Seeing archives: postmodernism and the changing intellectual place of archives. Am Arch 65:24–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ngai S (2005) Ugly feelings. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Neil T (2015) ‘Contract worker at National Records Center fired for mishandling draft-card information.’ St. Louis Post Dispatch. 27 Mar. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/contract-worker-at-national-records-center-fired-for-mishandling-draft/article_e059b8b8-215e-5a86-ae74-1f5a7b14a7c2.html. Accessed 29 April 2015

  • Orr J (2012) Feeling the archive. Emot, Sp, Soc 5(3):186–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pearce-Moses R (2005) Appraisal. Society of American Archivists glossary. http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/a/appraisal. Accessed 27 April 2015

  • Pedwell C, Whitehead A (2012) Affecting feminism: questions of feeling in feminist theory. Feminist Theory 13(2):115–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinney C (2014) Sepia mutiny: colonial photography and its others in India. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 71–92

    Google Scholar 

  • Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum Group (2011) Educating for the archival multiverse. Am Arch 74:69–101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Punzalan R (2009) ‘All the things we cannot articulate’: colonial leprosy archives and community commemoration. In: Bastian J, Alexander B (eds) Community archives: the shaping of memory. Facet, London, pp 187–219

    Google Scholar 

  • Punzalan RL, Caswell M (2016) Critical directions for archival approaches to social justice. Lib Q 86

  • Ramirez HR (2006) A living archive of desire. In: Burton A (ed) Archive stories: facts, fictions, and the writing of history. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 111–135

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rawlings G (2011) Statelessness, citizenship and annotated discriminations: meta documents and the aesthetics of the subtle at the United Nations. Hist Anth 22(4):461–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reed B (2014) Reinventing access. Arch Manus 42(2):123–132

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Regan P (2010) Unsettling the settler within: Indian residential schools, truth telling, and reconciliation in Canada. University of British Columbia Press, Toronto

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson E (2010) Touching the void: affective history and the impossible. Rethink Hist J Theory Pract 14(4):503–520

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick EK (2003) Touching feeling: affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick EK, Frank A (1995) Shame and its sisters: a silvan Tompkins reader. Duke University Press, Durham

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheehan T (2014) Looking pleasant, feeling white: the social politics of the photographic smile. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 127–158

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith SM (2014) Photography between desire and grief: Roland Barthes and F. Holland Day. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 29–46

    Google Scholar 

  • Staiger J, Cvetkovich A, Reynolds AM (eds) (2010) Political emotions. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor D (2014) Trauma in the archive. In: Brown EH, Phu T (eds) Feeling photography. Duke University Press, Durham, pp 239–251

    Google Scholar 

  • Trundle C, Kaplonski C (2011) Introduction: the political lives of documents. Hist Anth 22(4):407–414

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallace D (2010) Locating agency: interdisciplinary perspectives on professional ethics and archival morality. J Info Ethics 19(1):172–189

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallace DA, Pasick P, Berman Z, Weber E (2014) Stories for hope–Rwanda: a psychological–archival collaboration to promote healing and cultural continuity through intergenerational dialogue. Arch Sci 14(3–4):275–306

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White MA (2014) Archives of intimacy and trauma: queer migration documents as technologies of affect. Rad Hist Rev 120:75–93. doi:10.1215/01636545-2703733

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yorke LK (2014) Nine hundred points of light: the Canadian community of archives. Can Iss 44–49 (Special Issue 2014)

  • Zembylas M (2007) The affective politics of hatred: implications for education. Intercult Ed 18(3):177–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zembylas M (2014) Theorizing ‘difficult knowledge’ in the aftermath of the ‘affective turn’: implications for curriculum and pedagogy in handling traumatic representations. Curriculum Inquiry 44(3):390–412

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The University of California, Los Angeles’s Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program generously funded this research. The author would like to acknowledge Michelle Caswell and Anne J. Gilliland for their mentorship, and along with those of Jesse Deshayes and Mario H. Ramirez, for their critical and constructive suggestions. Comments from two anonymous reviewers were instrumental in strengthening this piece and developing its social justice focus. The author would also like to acknowledge all who have contributed to the “Archives and Emotion” bibliography begun by Kate Theimer.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marika Cifor.

Additional information

Justice is not simply a feeling. And feelings are not always just. But justice involves feelings, which move us across the surfaces of the world, creating ripples in the intimate contours of our lives. Where we go, with these feelings, remains an open question (Ahmed 2004, p. 202).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cifor, M. Affecting relations: introducing affect theory to archival discourse. Arch Sci 16, 7–31 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9261-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9261-5

Keywords

Navigation