Desobediente Archive

Abstract

Current discussions of ecocentric governance, earth law, and environmental and wellbeing economics, offer a sweeping critique of the goods obtained by neoliberal capitalism’s scarcity and self-interest, and suggest other paths leading to degrowth, sustainability, resilience, and anti-fragility.  These concepts, in turn, speak to post-custodial ramifications touching on every aspect of the archival endeavor, from design to preservation agendas. This article revisits concepts delineated in an earlier published piece that considers community archives as an archival “tool” and commons. I interrogate the notion of the tragedy of the commons, pointing to both its limitations and benefits within an archival context, and apply Wendell Berry’s criteria for tools to community archives, the concept of the black box, and conventional archives.

By applying a set of theoretical standards for evaluating archival tools, I point to the misalignment of contemporary archival principles and purpose in time of climate emergency. I issue an urgent call to address how, like society at large, archives--which should offer the model par-excellence of resilience and provide a reservoir of survival knowledge in time of climate mitigation--are failing to devolve their design and methods in the face of black swan events. By destabilizing the major earth systems, we have set the stage for mass extinctions and called into question a future of geopolitical resilience. Accordingly, archives should be on a footing to address these realities and to create a living treasury of community and earth knowledge geared to create resilience in the face of convergent political and environmental crises—a new sort of living archive.