Can you imagine writing a paper with over 20 other people? What would you write about?
Michelle Caswell co-authored such a paper, titled “Educating for the Archival Multiverse.” In March, she gave a guest lecture to the TLAM class on issues related to this paper.
The “multiverse” in the title refers to the concept of various possible universes; in this case universes of thought and perception that make up the worldviews of different people and different cultures. Caswell and her compatriots feel that current archival practice and the education that feeds into it is dominated solely by a Western cultural perspective.The worldviews of other cultures, and particularly native cultures, are not reflected in archives.
Caswell explained that possible solutions to this issue can be found in the closely related concepts of pluralism and social justice.
Archival pluralism requires practitioners to first recognize the varying perspectives of different cultures and communities, and how the default system of archives may disenfranchise them. Building relationships with communities and collaborating with them can help to overcome these issues. Pluralism encourages multidisciplinary approaches to knowledge, and exploring different perspectives
Social justice is the promotion of a more equitable distribution of resources within society. It also promotes the idea that various peoples should be able to express and define themselves in their own ways, and not have to be defined by others; obviously, this is closely related to pluralism. Emphasizing social justice as a goal challenges the predominant view of archivists as impartial custodians of cultural material. While archivists may be well intentioned, current archival practice perpetuates a single cultural perspective and the associated power structures.
Although the focus of the paper and the lecture was on archives, it is obvious that other cultural institutions, like libraries and museums, could benefit from similar considerations.
And of course, it is not just Caswell and her coauthors who are working towards these changes. A similar philosophy can be seen in Mukurtu (pronounced MOOK-oo-too). This is a platform for digital archives created in collaboration with the Warumungu Aborigines of Australia. The system limits access to certain material in accordance with cultural protocols and authority. It is open source and available for use by other communities. More information can be found at: http://www.mukurtu.org/
-Travis Mueller