I would add another damaging example of the Critical approach to archives, which is to present users with content warnings. To tell people the archives are "harmful" reflects embarrassment, or shame, about what the archives contain. Such warnings are not only absurd presentism, but disrespect the intelligence of users of archives.
A small quibble: "Archivists... must guard against letting “epidemical fanaticism” develop in us a self-righteous, overly critical perspective which infects our work and rejects prudence when advocating for social change." I would argue that it is not archivists' job to advocate for social change, whether radically or prudently. To paraphrase Stanley Fish: Do your job, don't do someone else's job, and don't let someone else do your job.
I would add another damaging example of the Critical approach to archives, which is to present users with content warnings. To tell people the archives are "harmful" reflects embarrassment, or shame, about what the archives contain. Such warnings are not only absurd presentism, but disrespect the intelligence of users of archives.
A small quibble: "Archivists... must guard against letting “epidemical fanaticism” develop in us a self-righteous, overly critical perspective which infects our work and rejects prudence when advocating for social change." I would argue that it is not archivists' job to advocate for social change, whether radically or prudently. To paraphrase Stanley Fish: Do your job, don't do someone else's job, and don't let someone else do your job.
I'm so excited to just have realized that you can get a ton of Burke's stuff on LibriVox: https://librivox.org/author/3621 .