In “Colonial Violence and the Postcolonial Digital Archive,” Roopika Risam tackles digital archives and their role or relationship to post-Colonial knowledge collection and preservation (research, discourse, etc.). The author asks the reader to reconsider the “role of representation in digital archives.” Digital archives are a few steps ahead of the race to decolonize history and knowledge compared to traditional archives, but this idea is not near realized.
“The promise of digital archives is far from guaranteed, since traces of colonial violence appear within them. In the context of the digital cultural record, digital archives hold both the risk of reaffirming colonial discourse and the promise of challenging it through the development of new archives and design practices.”
We are tasked with waking up from the fantasy that these information institutions are (by default) open, accessible, and representative of all. Colonialism had and still has an effect on what is saved and preserved versus what is thrown out and destroyed. And more often than not, it was documents of and about the oppressed that were (and still are) excluded from historical narratives. “As the move to digitize declassified documents continues, there will continue to be gaps in the archives, and the digital cultural record will always be incomplete, ruptured by the politics of empire.”
Texts and archives have also played starring roles in colonial violence. By exclusion and destruction, recorded histories were curated from the perspective of the colonizer. “The digital cultural record is thus at risk of being a mirror of a colonial world-picture, another representation of colonized subjects from a colonial perspective that authorizes imperialism.”
We must decolonize digital archives. “Postcolonial digital archives must contend with these born-digital materials that resist colonialism and imperialism. Together, these projects illuminate the importance of ensuring that new digital worlds complicate the dominant ideologies that remain within the digital cultural record in the wake of colonialism.”
But how does one avoid contributing or falling victim to this ever-present cycle of colonial violence in (both physical and digital) archives, unintentional or otherwise? “An important dimension of postcolonial digital humanities focuses on uncovering and remediating the ways that digital humanities has contributed to the epistemic violence of colonialism and is implicated in colonial forms of knowledge production.” Postcolonial digital humanities can help fill in the gaps of digital knowledge production through building projects (with inclusion,awareness, and responsibility at its center) that display how digital humanities can be used to begin the decolonization process.
Born-digital texts are suggested as one possible solution. Especially over the past few years, social media and online activism contribute to this kind of knowledge work. “The advent of ready public access to the internet around the world has granted consumers access to the means of digital knowledge production, giving rise to digital “archives”—collections of material online that exist beyond libraries and institutional repositories.” Social media and activism significantly help rectify this issue. However, oftentimes they are caught up in what many have termed “ hashtag activism, where users will repost images and stories, like and retweet things while not doing the groundwork. “In spite of these criticisms, hashtag activism has produced important born-digital texts from contemporary social movements.” Risam also adds, “Contrary to the apparently flat timelines that users see, hashtags provide vertical engagement, an opportunity to plumb the depths of the putative archive constituted by the hashtag.” It connects users as well as providing a way to read about similar information or perspectives.
Though unconventional, hashtags could very well be one (of many) solution(s) of decolonizing digital archives. Though preserving and sharing materials is an essential function of archives, the archives themselves also play a significant role in what ways and which stories are told.
Amber Sophia 