Making History: Archival Activism (to Archive Activism) in the Interwar Period

Archival activists are actors who engage in collecting and documenting events otherwise forgotten. They aim to chronicle the history of struggles for social justice and record the memory of disenfranchised groups. This project explores the emergence of archival activism in the interwar era. Its main focus are archival practices of feminists in the Netherlands and civil rights activists in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s to record their members’ memories and document the experiences of their communities. The research is guided by questions about the emergence and development of specific documentary practices, the sharing of methods among archival activist groups, and the aims that drove their archiving practices. It also examines the relationship between archival activism and the claims and causes of those two social movements. And it asks about the significance memory had for the movements’ identities and political strategies. These questions situate the study at the intersection of memory studies, archival studies, and the history of social movements.

Archival collections not only document events; they also produce historical facts. Archives and the practice of archiving originate in political domination and are intimately linked to structures of power. Archivists are not neutral agents who merely preserve, organize, and classify documents. They actively shape perceptions of reality by controlling the operations of archives and thereby affecting the construction of historical memory. By creating their own records, archival activists engage with the performative functions of the archive in counter-hegemonic ways. They challenge state-controlled record collection and intervene in the social construction of memory and forgetting as they aim to preserve the history and activities, the suffering and struggles of those whose voices would otherwise remain unheard and the memory of whom is distorted or suppressed.

Since their emergence in the mid-nineteenth century, social movements generally have been acutely aware of the significance of history, memory, and remembrance for their own futures. Feminists and civil rights activists set about rediscovering their pasts in the interwar period in order to strengthen their collective identities, especially in marginalized communities. By recording their activities and establishing their own narratives, social movements reclaimed control over their history. Documenting the injustices suffered by disenfranchised social groups supported their call for redress and provided evidence for the criminal prosecution of abuses and for denouncing repression. Archival activism thus encouraged the critical examination of existing power relations and inspired the imagining of a better future.

The first decades of the twentieth century were a crucial moment in the emergence of archival activism and the development of new methods for gathering data hat recorded silenced voices. With its emphasis on the interwar period, the project broaches a largely unexplored chapter of this history by looking at the origins and growing significance of archival activism at a time when transnational exchange and international policies increasingly shaped the agenda of social movements and influenced social research. Its findings will be a reference source for present-day social protagonists of memory and historicize activities that are often seen as innovations of the social movements that emerged in the 1960s and the resulting shifts in historical consciousness.