Caswell's formulation of humanity has a very prescribed and limiting sense of things like intention, agency, motivation, and cause/effect, writes guest contributor Bradley J. Wiles.
This essay is right on time for me as I am preparing an introductory course on archives and special collections. Do I have your permission to link to this essay? I just checked and we have this book as an e-book so I can assign it. However, there seem to be no review articles that address the complexity as well as you do.
Thanks for your interest, Kathleen! I'm relaying your inquiry to the guest contributor in case he doesn't see it here.
Generally speaking, Heterodoxy in the Stacks content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives 4.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/] unless otherwise noted -- guest contributor Bradley J. Wiles agreed to these terms.
Currently the literature of librarianship in our journals does not have many heterodox voices. I think it important that these be heard. I have been thinking about the huge sums being paid to writers for their archives. And the decline of English/Lit majors. There is a recent NYer essay on this and a Twitter Feed about what to do with English/Lit majors. How are costs of collections squared with the use of collections? Mine will be an introductory course and these big questions concern me.
Totally agree there are few venues where heterodox voices in our field can published or be heard. A monoculture has grown up over time but especially in the past 5-10 years. Hence this substack. Maybe we need our own Journal of Controversial Ideas.
I think that the closure of many vibrant library discussion lists from ALA that had to switch to ALA Connect has impaired discussion. ALA Connect is cumbersome to use and I think many people stopped participating in general discussions. When I look at the Connect site it is mainly announcements.
The barbarians are at the gates. Will the city survive?
Engineer here. I follow this substack mostly out of concern that our archives not devolve into what seemed ludicrous caricature when I first read Orwell's 1984 in the '70s but which now seems a frighteningly real possibility. I've wondered what sort of forensic methods future archeologists and historians might use a thousand years from now in sifting through the rubble of our time, should we continue down a path into a factual dark age.
I am re-reading Orwell : the Authorized Biography.(Shelden, Michael. 1st ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991).
The arc of his writing in the 1930s is extremely important to us now, I think. His experience as an Imperial policeman in Burma for 5 years gives weight to his observations.
Not only is "the more immediate goal of American archival efforts should be advancing sovereignty and land reclamation for Indigenous people and slavery reparations for Black people" an "ambitious proposition and a tall order" but I don't think that archives in their entirety should be focused on any one thing.
I am growing weary of how these attacks are necessitating defensive responses and thus taking up all the oxygen in the room. What are we not able to think about because of the constant need to defend the foundations of our professions?
Many archivists now pride themselves on how obnoxiously and consciously politicized they have made their work and they will admit that they seek the protection of tenure on purpose for the express purpose of "undoing" fill-in-the-blank-with-various-historical-evils-here. I was barked at quite defensively--and revealingly-- by one such archivist on an online forum for suggesting that the anti-neutrality mindset boils down to figuring out which form of monomania one is going to choose to inform one's work.
I teach in Florida and you all have probably seen how DEI issues are under scrutiny. I admit in the way back days to have been quite strident about including women in archives and special collections but that was an effort to expand not refocus and exclude.
I don't think that's unreasonable at all and isn't what I'm talking about. Of COURSE we want to include the traditionally excluded in the profession. I'm talking about the purposeful re-prioritizing, re/de-emphasizing and even selecting/not selecting materials related to whatever the special collection's focus is based on the exact sorts of political/intersectional/insert ideological buzzword here litmus tests that archives are supposed to avoid. Pertinence, accuracy, proximity etc. have been de-emphasized in favor of wedging revision or sociopolitical repair work in.
For example... In 2011, a picture of a multi-cultural/diverse group of women doing a firefighting drill somewhere near Pearl Harbor in the 1940s emerged and was labelled as being taken during the actual attack, though it pretty obviously wasn't. For a few days, a major news outlet let the caption stand, with predictable comments about how this was an untold story of that day, etc. etc. Eventually, one of the women pictured set the record straight--it was just a drill and it wasn't on 12/7/41. But now that woman is dead. At one time, we could rely on archivists to be willing to set misunderstandings like that straight when they discovered the truth in the absence of living witnesses. But I wonder: will they be willing to do so in the future? Would they be willing now, in 2023?
WEBCCCHAM is a new one for me. Would have been good to have it defined ( perhaps in parentheses ) the first time you used it. Otherwise a great, well argued essay.
This essay is right on time for me as I am preparing an introductory course on archives and special collections. Do I have your permission to link to this essay? I just checked and we have this book as an e-book so I can assign it. However, there seem to be no review articles that address the complexity as well as you do.
Thanks for your interest, Kathleen! I'm relaying your inquiry to the guest contributor in case he doesn't see it here.
Generally speaking, Heterodoxy in the Stacks content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives 4.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/] unless otherwise noted -- guest contributor Bradley J. Wiles agreed to these terms.
Currently the literature of librarianship in our journals does not have many heterodox voices. I think it important that these be heard. I have been thinking about the huge sums being paid to writers for their archives. And the decline of English/Lit majors. There is a recent NYer essay on this and a Twitter Feed about what to do with English/Lit majors. How are costs of collections squared with the use of collections? Mine will be an introductory course and these big questions concern me.
Totally agree there are few venues where heterodox voices in our field can published or be heard. A monoculture has grown up over time but especially in the past 5-10 years. Hence this substack. Maybe we need our own Journal of Controversial Ideas.
I think that the closure of many vibrant library discussion lists from ALA that had to switch to ALA Connect has impaired discussion. ALA Connect is cumbersome to use and I think many people stopped participating in general discussions. When I look at the Connect site it is mainly announcements.
Link away :)
Thank you, I will. I want the students to have broad conversations and Substack seems the only way to ensure that this happens.
The barbarians are at the gates. Will the city survive?
Engineer here. I follow this substack mostly out of concern that our archives not devolve into what seemed ludicrous caricature when I first read Orwell's 1984 in the '70s but which now seems a frighteningly real possibility. I've wondered what sort of forensic methods future archeologists and historians might use a thousand years from now in sifting through the rubble of our time, should we continue down a path into a factual dark age.
This article bears on the issues brought up in this essay: https://unherd.com/2023/03/the-death-of-historical-truth/
I am re-reading Orwell : the Authorized Biography.(Shelden, Michael. 1st ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991).
The arc of his writing in the 1930s is extremely important to us now, I think. His experience as an Imperial policeman in Burma for 5 years gives weight to his observations.
Not only is "the more immediate goal of American archival efforts should be advancing sovereignty and land reclamation for Indigenous people and slavery reparations for Black people" an "ambitious proposition and a tall order" but I don't think that archives in their entirety should be focused on any one thing.
I am growing weary of how these attacks are necessitating defensive responses and thus taking up all the oxygen in the room. What are we not able to think about because of the constant need to defend the foundations of our professions?
Many archivists now pride themselves on how obnoxiously and consciously politicized they have made their work and they will admit that they seek the protection of tenure on purpose for the express purpose of "undoing" fill-in-the-blank-with-various-historical-evils-here. I was barked at quite defensively--and revealingly-- by one such archivist on an online forum for suggesting that the anti-neutrality mindset boils down to figuring out which form of monomania one is going to choose to inform one's work.
I teach in Florida and you all have probably seen how DEI issues are under scrutiny. I admit in the way back days to have been quite strident about including women in archives and special collections but that was an effort to expand not refocus and exclude.
I don't think that's unreasonable at all and isn't what I'm talking about. Of COURSE we want to include the traditionally excluded in the profession. I'm talking about the purposeful re-prioritizing, re/de-emphasizing and even selecting/not selecting materials related to whatever the special collection's focus is based on the exact sorts of political/intersectional/insert ideological buzzword here litmus tests that archives are supposed to avoid. Pertinence, accuracy, proximity etc. have been de-emphasized in favor of wedging revision or sociopolitical repair work in.
For example... In 2011, a picture of a multi-cultural/diverse group of women doing a firefighting drill somewhere near Pearl Harbor in the 1940s emerged and was labelled as being taken during the actual attack, though it pretty obviously wasn't. For a few days, a major news outlet let the caption stand, with predictable comments about how this was an untold story of that day, etc. etc. Eventually, one of the women pictured set the record straight--it was just a drill and it wasn't on 12/7/41. But now that woman is dead. At one time, we could rely on archivists to be willing to set misunderstandings like that straight when they discovered the truth in the absence of living witnesses. But I wonder: will they be willing to do so in the future? Would they be willing now, in 2023?
WEBCCCHAM is a new one for me. Would have been good to have it defined ( perhaps in parentheses ) the first time you used it. Otherwise a great, well argued essay.