Uncovering the Marginalized Voice in the Community Archive

Defining the archive in the Western tradition is an ongoing process with a complicated history. Equally as difficult is defining the nature of archival documents. The commonality linking the archive and archival documents can be traced to the positivist tradition of the nineteenth century and its influence on the beginnings of archival science. In this positivist tradition priority is placed on the elites and the non-elites are often marginalized. In recent decades scholars have turned away from this positivist tradition in search of the voice of those customarily marginalized within the archive and archival records. Jeannette Bastian, in her work on community archives in the Caribbean, writes that archival documents often “speak for those whose voices are otherwise silent” (2003, 2). Other scholars have made abundant use of community archives in Appalachian repositories to unravel the history and impact of events such as those related to labor history or to the papers of the elite within the region, but closer examination of these regional documents often reveal information regarding those within the community that were traditionally marginalized. Community archives, Jimmy Zavala and his colleagues argue, “challenge hierarchical structures of governance found in mainstream archival institutions” because they possess more autonomy than larger archives (2017, 11). This paper will focus on the community archive in the Western tradition, discovering those marginalized in archival documents, and the community archive as a space for the counter narratives of these people who are often excluded from the archive. References Bastian, Jeannette Allis. 2003. Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost its Archives and Found its History. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Zavala, Jimmy, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. 2017. “‘A Process Where we’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists 45, no. 3: 202-15. https://do1.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.137708