Rancière, political theory and activist community appraisal

ABSTRACT

Researchers must continually discriminate between competing sources of evidence, knowledge and theoretical justification, selecting who we believe to be credible informants and what we perceive as reliable testimony. In the keeping of records, particularly in the act of appraisal, we utilise methods of evaluation that reflect the social processes, institutional procedures, and interpersonal influences common to our disciplinary milieu. Viewing activist community recordkeeping and archiving through the lens of Rancière and SMT (Social Movement Theory), this article extends theoretical discussion into areas silent in the archival discourse to date. Activists working in radical community recordkeeping environments and archival situations face political and epistemic choices with regard to how and why they represent certain subjects and materials. The authors explore these contentions through the experiences of two such radical archives: Archimovi, an Italian archive of radical social movements; and the archive in a records continuum sense, the radical recordkeeping of animal activist group Direct Action Everywhere, based in the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Social epistemology
• living archive
• radical recordkeeping
• Rancière
• political theory

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Greg Rolan and Viviane Frings-Hessami for their feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Katherine Jarvie, Gregory Rolan, and Heather Soyka, ‘Why “Radical Recordkeeping”?’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 45, no. 3, 2017, pp. 173–75.

2. Frank Upward, Gillian Oliver, Barbara Reed, and Joanne Evans, Recordkeeping Informatics for a Networked Age, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, 2018.

3. Frank Upward, ‘Structuring the Records Continuum – Part One: Postcustodial Principles and Properties’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 24, no. 2, 1996, pp. 268–85.

4. Sue McKemmish, ‘Are Records Ever Actual?’, in Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggott (eds), The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives First Fifty Years, Ancora Press, Clayton, 1994, p. 200.

5. See for example Gregory Rolan, ‘Towards Interoperable Recordkeeping Systems: A Meta-Model For Recordkeeping Metadata’, Records Management Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 2017, pp. 125–48.

6. See for example Joanne Evans, Sue McKemmish, and Greg Rolan, ‘Critical Approaches to Archiving and Recordkeeping in the Continuum’, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 2017, pp. 1–38.

7. A Burgos, ‘Jacques Rancière and Critical Theory: Issue Introduction’, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, vol. 27, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1–7.

8. Sue McKemmish, ‘Traces: Document, Record, Archive, Archives’, in Sue McKemmish, Michael Piggott, Barbara Reed, and Frank Upward (eds), Archives Recordkeeping in Society, Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2005, pp. 1–20.

9. Sue McKemmish, Barbara Reed, and Frank Upward, ‘The Records Continuum Model’, in Marcia J Bates, and Mary Niles Maack (eds), Encyclopaedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd ed., Taylor and Francis, Boca Raton, FL, 2009, pp. 4447–59.

10. Mark Howard, ‘Italian Radical Social Movements 1968–78: A Critical Study of Sociological Accounts of the Politics of Radical Social Movements in Italy’, unpublished thesis, Melbourne, 2015. See also Sidney Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965–1975, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989; and Donatella della Porta, ‘Eventful Protest, Global Conflicts’, Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, vol. 9, no. 2, 2008, pp. 27–56.

11. The SMT interpretation of the discursive work of the radical community is, in part, explainable as a response to the ‘classical agenda’ of SMT, the intent of which is, as McAdam highlights, to repopulate modern politics with a radical subject that is strategic and rational. See Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, 2001. See also the research of avowed consensus theorist Sidney Tarrow. The definitive work for reference is Sidney G Tarrow, Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965–1975, Oxford University Press, New York, 1989.

12. Steve Wright, The Weight of the Printed Word: Text, Context and Militancy in Operaismo, Brill, Amsterdam, 2021.

13. For a discussion on the valence of radical thought see: Mark Howard, ‘A Question of Knowledge: Radical Social Movements and Self-Education’, in A Means, DR Ford, and GB Slater (eds), Educational Commons in Theory and Practice: Global Pedagogy and Politics, Palgrave-Macmillan, New York, 2017, pp. 127–43.

14. Steve Fuller, ‘Social Epistemology: A Quarter-Century Itinerary’, Social Epistemology, vol. 26, no. 3–4, 2012, pp. 267–83.

15. See for example D Ghosh, J Sahadeo, C Robertson, and T Ballantyne, ‘A Living Archive of Desire: Teresita la campesina and the Embodiment of Queer Latino Community Histories, in A Burton (ed.), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, Duke University Press, Durham, 2005, pp. 111–35.

16. Nora Almeida and Jen Hoyer, ‘The Living Archive in the Anthropocene’, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019, p. 18.

17. A Dekker, Lost and Living (In) Archives: Collectively Shaping New Memories, Valiz, Amsterdam, 2017, pp. 16–17.

18. Joanne Evans and Greg Rolan, ‘Beyond Findings: Conversations with Experts’, Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, vol. 47, no. 2, 2018, p. 61.

19. Katherine Jarvie, Joanne Evans, and Sue McKemmish, ‘Radical Appraisal in Support of Archival Autonomy for Animal Rights Activism’, Archival Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09362-3; quoting Jarvie, Rolan and Soyka.

20. Evans, McKemmish, and Rolan, p. 1.

21. Joanne Evans, Sue McKemmish, Elizabeth Daniels, and Gavan McCarthy, ‘Self-Determination and Archival Autonomy: Advocating Activism’, Archival Science, vol. 15, no. 4, 2015, pp. 337–68.

22. Almeida and Hoyer, p. 20.

23. S Ristovska and M Price (eds), Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2018.

24. Sandra Ristovska, ‘Strategic Witnessing in an Age of Video Activism’, Media, Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 7, 2016, pp. 1034–37.

25. See for example a documentary on online-enabled citizen investigations against animal cruelty: Mark Lewis et al., ‘Don’t F**k with Cats’, documentary, Netflix, 2019.

26. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, Reprint, Verso, London, 2011.

27. See Mark Howard, ‘Social Movement Theory and the Italian Radical Community Archives: A Question of Valence?’ Journal of Community Informatics, vol. 15, 2019, pp. 3–21; and Alvin Goldman, ‘A Guide to Social Epistemology’, in Alvin Goldman and D Whitcomb (eds), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011, pp. 11–37.

28. ibid.

29. ibid., p. x; Alvin Goldman, ‘Experts: Which Ones Should you Trust?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 63, no. 1, 2010, pp. 85–110.

30. On this topic, refer to Miranda Fricker, ‘Rational Authority and Social Power: Towards a Truly Social Epistemology’, in Goldman and Whitcomb, pp. 54–70, and Kristie Dotson, ‘Conceptualising Epistemic Oppression’, Social Epistemology, vol. 28, no. 2, 2014, pp. 115–38.

31. ibid.

32. Lorraine Code, Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.

33. On confirmation bias and argumentative theory see Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, ‘Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory’, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, vol. 34, 2011, pp. 57–111.

34. On intergroup conflict see Dan M Kahan, Donald Braman, Geoffrey L Cohen, John Gastil, and Paul Slovic, ‘Who Fears the HPV Vaccine, Who Doesn’t, and Why? An Experimental Study of the Mechanisms of Cultural Cognition’, Law and Human Behaviour, vol. 34, no. 6, 2010, pp. 501–16.

35. Emma Craddock, Living Against Austerity: A Feminist Investigation of Doing Activism and Being Activist, Bristol University Press, Bristol, 2020, p. 22.

36. ibid.

37. ibid., p. 27.

38. David Moss, ‘Politics, Violence, Writing: The Rituals of “Armed Struggle” in Italy’, in David E Apter (ed.), The Legitimisation of Violence, Macmillan, London, 1997, pp. 83–127.

39. ‘Interpretive community’ designates a group, either purposively brought together or formed around a shared theoretical commitment, which has the express intent to make sense of or explain a specific phenomenon.

40. See: Moss, ‘Politics, Violence, Writing’; and Howard, ‘Social Movement Theory’.

41. Della Porta’s reasoning for this is outlined in Donatella della Porta, ‘Life-History in the Analysis of Social Movement Activists’, in Mario Diani and Ron Eyerman (eds), Studying Collective Action, Sage, London, 1992. See also, Howard, ‘Social Movement Theory’.

42. ibid.

43. della Porta, ‘Life-History’, p. 185.

44. ibid., pp. 186–88.

45. Howard, ‘Social Movement Theory’.

46. W Potter, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2011.

47. Max Blechman, Anita Chari, Rafeeq Hasan, and Jacques Rancière, ‘Democracy, Dissensus and the Aesthetics of Class Struggle: An Exchange with Jacques Rancière,’ Historical Materialism, vol. 13, no. 4, 2005, pp. 285–301.

48. Howard, ‘Italian Radical Social Movements’.

49. Howard, ‘A Question of Knowledge’.

50. della Porta, ‘Life-History’.

51. M Liosi on Rancière, ‘Activist Videos: Montage as a Creative Tool for Student Reflections on their Role as Spectators’, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, vol. 3, no. 1, 2018, p. 11.

52. A De Kosnik, Rogue Archives, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2016, p. 4.

53. See Jacques Rancière, Althusser’s Lesson, translated by Emiliano Battista, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2011, pp. 31–32; and Paul Patton, ‘Rancière’s Utopian Politics’, in Jean-Philippe Deranty and Alison Ross (eds), Jacques Rancière and the Contemporary Scene, Continuum, London, 2012, p. 133.

54. See Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1991.

55. Howard, ‘Italian Radical Social Movements’. On the ‘classic agenda’ see Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 17.

56. M Liosi, ‘Activist Videos: Montage as a Creative Tool for Student Reflections on their Role as Spectators’, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, vol. 3, no.1, 2018, p. 19.

57. D Daly, and C Brooks, ‘Frames and Community in Arizona’s All Souls Procession’, Text and Performance Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 4, 2019, pp. 322–40.

58. R Cordova, ‘Day of the Dead History: Ritual Dates Back 3,000 Years and is Still Evolving’, Arizona Republic, 7 October 2019, available at <https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/holidays/day-of-the-dead/2014/09/24/day-of-the-dead-history/16174911/>, accessed 7 April 2021.

59. This aligns with Rancière’s conceptualising of emancipatory politics as an aesthetic intervention, a disruption of social patterns and hierarchies that effects the perception, and meaning, of social experience. Rancière’s approach resists the temptation to categorise society into those who know and those who do not, and instead promotes a radical equality of intelligence. See Howard, ‘Italian Radical Social Movements’; Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, translated by Gabriel Rockhill, Continuum, London, 2004; Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2009; and Jacques Rancière, ‘The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes’, New Left Review, vol. 14, March–April 2002, pp. 133–51.

60. De Kosnik, p. 51.

61. See Howard, ‘Social Movement Theory’.

62. See Kristin Ross, May ‘68 and Its Afterlives, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002, p. 124.

63. Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy,’ translated by Julie Rose, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999, p. 50.

64. Jean-Philippe Deranty, ‘Logical Revolts,’ in Jean-Philippe Deranty (ed.), Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts, Acumen Publishing, Durham, 2010, p. 20.

65. ibid., p. 18.

66. Rancière, Althusser’s Lesson, pp. 118–19.

67. S Shawyer, ‘Emancipated Spectactors: Boal, Rancière, and the Twenty-First Century Spectator’, Performance Matters, vol. 5, no. 2, 2019, p. 47.

68. Giuliano Galletta, ‘Sui sentieri del Sessantotto’ [‘On the Pathways of 1968ʹ], in Giuliano Galletta (ed.), Gli anni del 68. Voci e carte dall’Archivio dei Movimenti [The Years of 1968. Voices and Papers from the Archive of Movements], Il Canneto Editore, Genoa, 2017, p. 11.

69. Galletta, Gli anni del 68; Virginia Niri, Voci d’archivio. La storia pubblica incontra il ’68 [Voices of the Archive. Public History Encounters 1968], Edizioni Archivio di Movimenti, Genoa, 2016.

70. Gerd-Rainer Horn, The Spirit of ‘68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007.

71. A good overview of the Italian social movement archives is Ilaria Morni (ed.), Rete degli archivi per non dimenticare [A Network of Archives So As Not To Forget], Istituto centrale per il restauro e la conservazione del patrimonio archivistico e librario, Rome, 2010.

72. Quoted in Bruno Piotti, ‘Archimovi, un luogo per la memoria’ [‘Archivomovi: A Place for Memory’], in Galletta, Gli anni del 68., p. 16.

73. Piotti, quoted in Niri, Voci d’archivio, p. 301.

74. Virginia Niri, ‘Per una storia pubblica’ [‘For A Public History’], in Galletta, Gli anni del 68, p. 11.

75. Niri, Voci d’archivio, p. 11.

76. ibid., p. 287.

77. Quoted in ibid., p. 162; see also the discussion p. 70.

78. Quoted in ibid., p. 72.

79. A Gilliland and S McKemmish, ‘Recordkeeping Metadata, the Archival Multiverse, and Societal Grand Challenges’, International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, 2012, Kuching Sarawak 3–7 September 2012.

80. This will be discussed in Katherine Jarvie’s Doctoral Thesis on Radical Recordkeeping, with DxE as a case study (forthcoming).

81. One exception is the North Carolina State University Library Special Collection, <https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/specialcollections/find/animalrights.html>, accessed 6 March 2021.

82. M Liosi, ‘Activist Videos: Montage as a Creative Tool for Student Reflections on their Role as Spectators’, Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, vol. 3, no. 1, 2018, p. 4.

83. L Gibbons, ‘Culture in the Continuum: YouTube, Small Stories and Memory-Making’, PhD thesis, Monash University, Faculty of Information Technology, Caulfield, Australia, 2015.

84. Liosi, p. 3.

85. Almeida and Hoyer, p. 20.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Howard

Mark Howard is a Research Fellow with the Philosophy program at Monash University, part of an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the field of Ethics, Policy and Public Engagement. He specialises in political philosophy, applied ethics and social informatics.

Katherine Jarvie

Katherine Jarvie has worked with archives in Australia since 2003 and is currently an Associate Director at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Library. Katherine is also a past Editor of Archives and Manuscripts and is an Editorial Board Member of the Archives and Records journal.

Steve Wright

Steve Wright is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. His recent research concerns the creation and use of documents in radical social movements.