ABSTRACT
Drawing on Gould and Harris’s conception of “liberatory memory work,” this chapter further imagines what might constitute emancipation in an archival context. Pulling together the theoretical framing of time in Chapter 1 with the empirical focus group data from community archives in Chapter 2 and the participant observation from SAADA in Chapter 3, I delineate three main aspects of liberatory memory work: the temporal, the affective, and the material. I then propose corresponding liberatory objectives for archival theory and practice: chrono-autonomy, self-recognition, and redistribution. I position archivists as liberatory memory workers who have a responsibility to activate records in the now in support of temporal, affective, and material justice. Throughout, I argue that community archives must seek liberation from oppressive structures (including the white temporal imaginary), rather than inclusion within them. I conclude by addressing the ethical obligations archivists of all kinds have toward dismantling oppressive systems and building liberatory ones in their stead.
