Excuses for Silence: A Review of The Silence of the Archive

The Silence of the Archive by David Thomas, Simon Fowler, and Valerie Johnson promises to investigate the causes of archival silence, and to find solutions for dealing with these silences. The topic is timely and important at a time when distrust of power is high, and there exists a concomitant expectation of finding truth in the archives. The book is reticent in its investigation, however, shying away from calling out the way power is exercised to create silences. The exception is Valerie Johnson’s argument on the necessity of silence, which challenges the tendency toward stasis in the archive