Practicing Archives with a Postmodern Perspective

Abstract

Despite the near ubiquity of so-called postmodern discourse in the social sciences and humanities over the past two decades, the archival profession has in general been loath to reconsider its self-image as objective guardian of a naturally occurring historical record. The “myth of objectivity and neutrality, “ as Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook have termed it, stems from pioneer archives theorist Sir Hilary Jenkinson, whose 1922 textbook asserted that archivists are the passive, impartial “keepers” of “disinterested” or “innocent” documentary residue inherited from the past. Recently, a growing number of archivists have begun to question this view and have called for the profession to reconsider this naïve, unexamined faith in its own objectivity. Non-archivists, too, have argued provocatively and persuasively on the nature of archives and the role of archivists.