ABSTRACT
My previous work has addressed the ways in which marginalized identity-based community archives counter the “symbolic annihilation” of oppressed communities, that is, the ways that predominantly white university and government archives have underrepresented, misrepresented, or completely ignored communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities. 1 Community archives counter symbolic annihilation with “representational belonging,” empowering marginalized people to have the autonomy and authority to establish, enact, and reflect on their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive, and positive. This chapter will go beyond these previous findings, using recent projects by South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) as examples. More specifically, it will address the relationship between liberatory appraisal and liberatory outreach in community archives, arguing that community archives should build on recuperative and representational collecting initiatives to activate records to stop cycles of oppression. It introduces the concept of “corollary records,” to show how records from similar moments in history can be activated in the present. Through liberatory activation, archives catalyze uses of records that seek to dismantle systems of oppression and imagine and enact new possible worlds.
