ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I explore auto/biographical paths within the archive, drawing on my research in the Archives and Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library (NYPL) with the papers of women workers in the garment industry in the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter unfolds in three parts: imaging, living, and writing the archive. What I suggest is that archival research be taken as an entanglement of intellectual and material practices with multiple points of emergence and some unforeseen destinations, as well as a wide variation of flows and rhythms. In this light, being-in-the-archive is both a journey and an adventure that needs cartographies of situated positions and tracks.