These Stories Must Be Told: Preliminary Observations by a Black Scholar Practitioner on Silences in the Archive
Abstract
As a scholar practitioner, a trained philosophical theologian, Methodist clergywoman, and social enterprise founder who is conducting oral histories as part of my doctoral internship in the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, my scholarly lens and methodological skills are being defined as I interrogate the COVID-19 archive. In this article I attempt to offer some preliminary reflections on my oral history curation focused on how Black and brown artists and activists, primarily based in Indianapolis, IN, frame their lived experiences of death, dying, mourning, and bereavement in the wake of COVID-19 utilizing critical archival practices: those practices that take seriously the methods of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Womanist, mujerista, and feminist methodologies, to name a few. The COVID-19 archive is a collection of oral histories, stories and artifacts depicting the times in which we are living, through the lenses of storytellers grappling with the pandemics of systemic racism, COVID-19, distrust in government, and various relics representing the idea of the United States of America in 2020, as such, I conclude with a brief exploration of how art emerges as both an outlet for creators and a mode of illumination for consumers.
“The notion that archives are neutral places with no vested interests has been undermined by current philosophical and theoretical handlings of the concept of the “Archive”; it is now undeniable that archives are spaces of power. Archival power is, in part, the power to allow voices to be heard. It consists of highlighting certain narratives and of including certain types of records created by certain groups. The power of the archive is witnessed in the act of inclusion, but this is only one of its components. The power to exclude is a fundamental aspect of the archive. Inevitably, there are distortions, omissions, erasures, and silences in the archive. Not every story is told.”1
I am neither an archivist, nor a curator, by training. I am a scholar practitioner, a trained philosophical theologian, Methodist clergywoman, and social enterprise founder who is conducting oral histories as part of my doctoral internship in the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute. My scholarly lens and methodological skills are being defined as I interrogate A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 (JOTPY). As such, the findings I share in this article reflect the limits of my academic training; however, I am also hopeful, as a scholar practitioner, that the findings may spark further investigation and discussion about how curatorial practices can be probed at every phase of the process to both hail and point towards the myriad stories that, despite our best curatorial efforts, may still remain untold.
Within the COVID-19 archive, a collection of stories and artifacts depicting the times in which we are living, through the lenses of storytellers grappling with the pandemics of systemic racism, COVID-19, distrust in government, and various relics representing the idea of America in 2020,2 curators and researchers alike have been attentive to archival silences. This article will attempt to enumerate categorically the silences we have identified and the efforts our team has deployed to address potential and realized silences. Building primarily upon Rodney G.S. Carter’s work, I begin with the following presuppositions and findings:
1.
Archives are not neutral.3
2.
To address the non-neutrality of the archive, archival power(s) should be named, addressed and when appropriate, leveraged.
3.
To mitigate against colonizing the curatorial, researchers do well to commit to critical archival practices.4
Archives are not neutral
Archivist Rodney G.S. Carter poignantly and rightly declares the nature of power in archival practices.5 Archives hold the power of framing and naming historical realities, albeit, from the vantage point of the archivist(s). The very work of curatorial practices presumes a level of information privilege and power that is not held among common everyday citizens. “From the founding of the nation’s first art museums to the establishment of American art as an academic discipline and the development of curatorial practices around American “fine art,” museums in this country and the collections they house have existed as material extensions of systems founded upon genocide and slavery, maintained by various practices of marginalization, omission, and erasure.”6 Given the vestiges of colonialism embedded within curatorial practices, how do researchers contend with the ways their practices explicitly and implicitly reproduce silences and reinscribe colonialism? As a member of the IUPUI Arts & Humanities (IAHI) cohort of researchers contributing to the JOTPY team, I have committed to critical archival practices7 including weekly check-ins with principal researchers across the project to comb the archives for glaring silences. At the IAHI, we intentionally employ an open access, open submission process for curatorial collections and we actively engage in courageous conversations concerning nomenclature that privileges certain epistemological and ethical frameworks.
Critical archival practices8 take seriously the methods of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Womanist, mujerista, and feminist methodologies, to name a few. For the COVID-19 Archive, this has meant being intentional about curating the stories of Black and Brown people, with varying educational, socio-economic, and intimate experiences. Recognizing that Blackness is not monolithic, I want to share some insights on silences in the archive related to Black and Brown artivist experiences of intimacy, particularly considering COVID-19.
Black Life and Black Lives Matter
“. . .there’s a common saying that blackness is not a monolith. . . we look a lot of different ways, we do a lot of different things; we participate in a lot of different activities.”9
The Summer of 2020 will likely become a significant historic cultural period, particularly considering the numbers of protests and the preponderance of organizing activity for racial justice movements. As such, the Black Lives Matter Movement and other movements for racial and social justice have emerged as important concepts within the COVID-19 archive with interviewees highlighting the racial inequities prior to COVID-19 and the impact that COVID-19 is having on Black and Brown communities. One of the interviews I conducted that illumined this concept most poignantly was with a local man who is popularly known in Indianapolis as Wildstyle Paschall.
“COVID-19 [is] exposing how flawed our system is and how many people we’ve left on the margins. And also people having more time on their hands to have a) for activism and b) to think about what’s really going on here. So, um I would say COVID-19 is really exposed a lot of racial inequities and inequities period, but a lot of racial disparities everywhere. Everything from who’s being affected physically or more likely to die because of lack of healthcare all the way to who’s more likely to get evicted because they’re more affected by the economic impact. So, I mean, there’s just a lot going on that I feel like COVID is, is kind of exposed, even with the social service agencies scrambling and really not quite having a, a plan in place to help people and realizing that a lot of the people that they’re helping, well, they were already doing bad before COVID and somehow, you know, we’ve been missing them all this time, but now we’re seeing that it’s even worse and we’re having to work harder. So [] COVID-19 has been an exposé into American values and society.”10
Recognizing both my power as an academic and my privilege as one of the only Black curators on this project, I have been intentional to curate stories that reflect the diversity of Black life and culture within the movements for racial and social justice, with particular attention to the ways organizers balance the peculiarity of this historic movement and the regularity of attending to routine familial obligations. Contrary to E. Franklin Frazier’s erroneous characterization,11 a hallmark of Black and indigenous peoples of color living throughout the diaspora is community making. Familial connections, both biological and those extended by virtue of neighborhood proximity, are important and the ways that Black women care for themselves and their families during COVID-19 have also emerged as important themes in the archive. One such story is that of Simone’ Murray.
Simone’ Murray self describes as a single mother of three school aged children, a caretaker for her elderly mother, an activist, minister, and freelance photographer based in Indianapolis, IN. In Simone’’s interview, she speaks at length about the differences in the sources of support available to her as she balances work, home, and activism during COVID-19.
“. . . for example, I say, you’re a white man with the family, you have a wife, and you’ve been together for quite some time, I’m a single black woman. And that already in itself, is that there’s some differences there, I have to be with my children to do their e-learning, I don’t have any help or support in that. And I can’t, and because that we are so disproportionately affected by this thing called COVID-19, I have to be extra careful, because again, I’m a caretaker for my mother, I have three children here. And I’m being forced to go into a building to do work with people. . . So I have to be extremely careful.”12
Akin to what Anne Marie Mingo at State College, PA unearthed during her oral history curation after Hurricane Katrina,13 the differences in intimate partner and/or intimate extended family support are most important when considering the importance of intimacy as it relates to the experiences of death and dying during COVID-19. Bereavement is a time of intimacy that is generally experienced and expressed in communal practices throughout the African Diaspora. These practices have been disrupted due to COVID-19. Although we were not intentional at the outset to curate them, these themes are emerging within the archive.
Also based in Indianapolis, IN, another local activist named Sa’Ra Skipper recounts her experiences that codify this theme:
“. . . I have a really close friend whose mother passed away from COVID. And really her, my friend when her mother passed, I was really just shocked like this, this virus really, you know, it’s for anybody, any anybody. And then when my, my boyfriend’s uncle passed away, I was just like, this is really, this is really real. And you never know who you know. I mean, it may not be a direct connection, but you know, somebody who knows somebody who has been affected by this, and to see, like, you know, to kind of know, like, the backstory, I won’t put, you know, my friend’s mom’s business out there or whatever. But just to know the backstory of how she was treated, and, and how my friend was treated. And in like, the last moments that she didn’t get to spend with her mom. Like, they text her, they didn’t even call her they text her to let her know that her mom passed away. And it’s just like, I get it, that we’re in a pandemic and everything like that, but still, where is the morality? Where is the empathy? Where is the decency in all of this?”14
Across the oceans, on the continent of Africa, another interviewee, Rev. Teboho Klaas, an African Methodist Episcopal Church Pastor and administrative officer for a nongovernmental organization in South Africa, illumines how COVID-19 has impacted burial and bereavement practices in South Africa as well:
“Once a person dies, one of the things is the home or place of the deceased would be flooded by people showing concern. That’s what would happen under normal circumstances. But this because it has limitations of when people should come and practice the, what I saw last week was the family did not allow people to step inside the house. So, they kept them on inside of the yard of the house. They gathered with them there and they spoke. And it was shorter visitations than normal. So there’s people who just come, stop, express their solidarity with the bereaved and have to leave. Even as they come in a register of who stepped into the yard needed to be kept, which is something so unfamiliar with people.”15
As the numbers of people succumbing to COVID-19 continue to rise across the globe,16 stories of death, dying, bereavement and mourning practices within the archive will likely continue to emerge as important themes not to be overlooked.
Art and the Archive
I do not want to close this brief exploration of my archival experiences on such a dismal note. At the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute, one of our primary foci is to facilitate research and education in the arts and the humanities while bringing diverse voices to the table to discuss our findings. Accordingly, I have a keen interest in exploring how individual and community artistic expression is engaged as an outlet. What I have noticed is that while there are many instances of intimacy being disrupted by death and dying, and differences of support available to different bodies, there are also beautiful expressions of how these activists, artists, and people of faith are coping during COVID-19. Art has emerged as one of those outlets.
One of the interviews I conducted was with Melita D. Carter, a spoken word artist based in Indianapolis, IN. Carter, recalling and referencing Nina Simone, punctuates the role of art as both an outlet for creators and a mode of illumination for consumers.
“I think art plays a major part, and myself, being a national and international spoken word artist myself, and writing and speaking since I was 14 years old, and all types of stuff. And I think that we, as artists, like I’m looking at Nina Simone, and Maya Angelou in front of me, you know, on my board, and just how powerful art is, you know, and how it can be used to, I guess, like, you know, how they say like, you attract more bees with honey, you know, and so it’s just like, being able to do something powerful, but still get your message across. I think that it is every artist’s responsibility and duty to make sure that that message is coming across in their music, you know, in whatever it is, whatever kind of artistry that they’re doing, because it takes art in its finest ways to be able to really bring and pull at the heartstrings of people and to have people to really understand what is going on. And art has been powerful enough to do that for centuries, you know. And so I think that art now just seeing all of the different things that’s happening: the Black Lives Matter murals, and like, all of the things and the artists that are coming out with their work and songs and poetry and all of the different things, and it’s just so moving, you know, and it’s just so necessary, and it gives people an outlet. So not even just that to tell a story. But it allows those who are being harmed, or those who are learning as well. To have an outlet to have somewhere to channel like for me, like poetry and speaking and singing and just gives me an outlet and gives me a way of releasing the pain of whatever it is that is happening inside of me and giving me an opportunity to release it in its purest form, and however it’s received, I have nothing to do with that. You know, and so, I think that art, to the movement, to the lives of Black people, is necessary, and I believe that every artist has a responsibility to reflect the times as, as Nina Simone said once.17
Author Arundhati Roy, in her acceptance lecture upon receipt of the Sydney Peace Prize, stated that “there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”18 As we continue archiving the lived experiences of various publics throughout this COVID-19 pandemic, I hope that all archivists might intentionally attend to personal proclivities that might awaken preferences for deliberately silencing or unhearing people whose phenotype is different than their own. Until then, I intend to seek out Brown and Black people whose stories may color A Journal of the Plague Year: A COVID-19 Archive (JOTPY) with vibrancy, vitality, and vigor. Hopefully, my efforts help to minimize the “distortions, omissions, erasures, and silences”19 that characterize archives. Inasmuch as it lies within me, these stories will be told.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Shonda Nicole Gladden https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1277-5738
Footnotes
1. Rodney G.S. Carter, “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”. Archivaria 61 (September 2006), 215–33, available at: https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541.
2. Nikole Hannah-Jones, “America Wasn’t A Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One (Published 2019)”. Nytimes.Com, 2020, available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html.
3. Ibid., 216.
4. M. Caswell, R. Punzalan, and T. Sangwand, “Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, 1 no. 2 (2017). doi:10.24242/jclis.v1i2.50.
5. Rodney G.S. Carter, “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”. Archivaria, 61 (September 2006): 215–33, available at: https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541.
6. Kelli Morgan, “To Bear Witness: Real Talk about White Supremacy in Art Museums Today.” (2020), https://burnaway.org/to-bear-witness/ (accessed 23 September 2020).
7. M. Caswell, R. Punzalan, and T. Sangwand, Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction. Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, 1, no. 2 (2017). doi:10.24242/jclis.v1i2.50.
8. Ibid.
9. Simone’ Murray, interview by author, September 23, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 39:55–40:29.
10. Wildstyle Paschall, interview by author, September 2, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 27:36–29:17.
11. See “Family Disorganization among Negroes.” Opportunity, 9 (1931):204–7.
12. Simone’ Murray, interview by author, September 23, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 21:55–23:19.
13. AnneMarie Mingo, “Making Lemonade with Substitute Sugar.” Practical Matters Journal, Spring 2018, no. 11, (2018).
14. Sa’Ra Skipper, interview by author, October 6, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 17:30–18:41.
15. Teboho Klaas, interview by author, April 11, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 28:18–29:25.
16. Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. “Mortality Analyses – Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center”. Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, 2020, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality.
17. Melita D. Carter, interview by author, October 5, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 32:42–35:17.
18. The 2004 City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture as delivered by Arundhati Roy at the Seymour Centre, Sydney on 3 November 2004.
19. Rodney G.S. Carter, “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”. Archivaria, 61 (September 2006): 215–33. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541.
References
Carter Melita D. Interview by Gladden Shonda Nicole, October 5, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities, Institute, Indianapolis IN, 32:42–35:17.
Carter Rodney G.S. 2006. “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence.” Archivaria 61 (September): 215–33. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541.
Caswell Michelle, Punzalan Ricardo, Sangwand T-Kay. 2017. “Editors’ Note: Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1 (2). https://doi:10.24242/jclis.v1i2.50.
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. “Mortality Analyses – Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.” Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, 2020, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality, last updated November 5, 2020.
Klaas Teboho. Interview by Gladden Shonda Nicole, April 11, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 28:18–29:25.
Morgan Kelli. 2020. “To Bear Witness: Real Talk about White Supremacy in Art Museums Today. https://burnaway.org/to-bear-witness/ (accessed September 23, 2020).
Mingo AnneMarie. “Making Lemonade with Substitute Sugar: Towards An Ethics of Receptivity.” Practical Matters Journal, June 19, 2018, http://practicalmattersjournal.org/2018/06/19/making-lemonade/.
Murray Simone’. Interview by Gladden Shonda Nicole, September 23, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 39:55–40:29; 21:55–23:19.
Paschall Wildstyle. Interview by Gladden Shonda Nicole, September 2, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 27:36–29:17.
Skipper Sa’Ra. Interview by Gladden Shonda Nicole, October 6, 2020, The Covid19 Oral History Project, IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, Indianapolis IN, 17:30–18:41.
Biographies
Shonda Nicole Gladden is Zuri’s mother, a scholar-practitioner, and American Studies PhD student at Indiana University (IUPUI). Her research emerges at the intersections of philosophy, art, gender, and cultural studies.
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