Papers by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2016
This panel invites participants and panelists to consider together how archives and other informa... more This panel invites participants and panelists to consider together how archives and other information institutions might work with and engage communities experiencing ongoing and extreme (neo)colonial violence and oppression. We begin from a perspective that suggests that community and/or autonomous archives that reflect community perspectives and histories may indeed have the potential to support the efforts of these same communities to grapple with complex and violent (neo)colonial histories and experiences and to re-story dominant narratives that serve to stigmatize and marginalize them. This panel explores both the possibilities and limitations of antiviolence archival interventions from a number of angles, including: interrogating the role of the archivist in community archiving; reflecting on how partnerships can be built between archival institutions and communities; and considering how anti-violence, anti-racist, decolonizing, and feminist theoretical frameworks can aid archival interventions that speak to the efforts of communities aimed at overcoming structural violence and erasure. Drawing on the archival experiences and practice of panelists, this panel poses a series of questions to the audience to generate discussions aimed at drawing connections between relevant theories, and practical and technical considerations in the service of anti-violence archiving.
Barricade: A Journal of Antifacism & Translation, 2024
Briarpatch Magazine, 2024
Sage Research Methods: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research Refusal in Research: An Anticolonial Feminist Stance to History Writing and Archiving on Stolen Land, 2023
For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of... more For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website. A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos, embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio content, and downloadable tables and resources.
In the Field (blog of the Association of Canadian Archivists), 2023
https://archivists.ca/Blog/13060753
Disputed Archival Heritage, 2023
Disputed Archival Heritage brings important new perspectives into the discourse on displaced arch... more Disputed Archival Heritage brings important new perspectives into the discourse on displaced archives. In contrast to shared or joint heritage framings, the book considers the implications of force, violence and loss in the displacement of archival heritage. With chapters from established and emerging scholars in archival studies, Disputed Archival Heritage extends and enriches the conversation that started with the earlier volume, Displaced Archives. Advancing novel theories and methods for understanding disputes and claims over archives, the volume includes chapters that focus on Indigenous records in settler colonial states; literary and community archives; sub-national and private sector displacements; successes in repatriating formerly displaced archives; comparisons with cultural objects seized by colonial powers and the relationship between repatriation and reparations. Analysing key concepts such as joint heritage and provenance, the contributors unsettle Western understandings of records, place and ownership. Disputed Archival Heritage speaks to the growing interest in shared archival heritage, repatriation of cultural artefacts and cultural diasporas. As such, it will be a useful resource for academics, students and practitioners working in the field of archives, records and information management, as well as cultural property and heritage management, peace and conflict studies and international law.
Archival Science, 2019
My turn to state an equation: colonization = 'thingification'. [para] I hear the storm. They talk... more My turn to state an equation: colonization = 'thingification'. [para] I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about 'achievements,' diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out. […p.51…] So the real problem, you say, is to return to them. No, I repeat. […] For us, the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond.-Aimé Césaire (1972/1955), p. 42-3, 51-2. Decolonization "…fundamentally alters being, and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor…" Franz Fanon tells us in the opening pages of The Wretched of the Earth (2004/1961, p. 2), his searing indictment of the colonial and racialist foundations of western civilization and a call to arms that provides revolutionary theory for the Afro-Asian liberation movements grounded in the Algerian experience. As Cabral (1980/1966) famously argued at the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana, theory is necessary to any decolonization movement or liberation struggle. Decolonization, Fanon continues:
Archivaria, 2016
Cet article place la science archivistique en dialogue avec les études autochtones et les théorie... more Cet article place la science archivistique en dialogue avec les études autochtones et les théories raciales critiques afin d'explorer deux cas de cour liés aux documents d'archives et à la Commission de vérité et réconciliation au Canada. Il examine sur quelle base la cour pouvait conclure que certains documents devaient être produits, d'autres conservés de façon temporaire, et d'autres encore, détruits. En tenant compte des études récentes qui préconisent un changement de la rhétorique au sujet des droits humains et de la diversité dans le discours archivistique, je soutiens que la disparition discursive ou la « spectralisation » des peuples autochtones joue un rôle crucial dans le processus de dépossession de leurs terres, de leurs ressources et de leur héritage culturel. En prenant note des tensions qui existent entre le désir d'être inscrit dans la mémoire et l'envie d'être oublié, j'affirme que l'incorporation de documents créés par des peuples autochtones ou à leur sujet dans les archives nationales du colonisateur demeure cruciale à la constitution de la mémoire historique archivistique de ce dernier (au détriment d'une mémoire historique archivistique autochtone), qui transforme la honte et la culpabilité nationales canadiennes en gloire et honneur nationaux. En conceptualisant le centre d'archives national canadien comme un lieu hanté par la crainte et le désir, et par la culpabilité et le triomphe nationaux, je montre comment les cas de cour de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation révèlent ou mettent en évidence les histoires de violence coloniale. ABSTRACT This article places archival science, Indigenous studies, and critical theories on race and colonialism in dialogue so as to explore two court cases related to records and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada. It questions on what basis the courts would rule that some records were to be produced, others temporarily preserved, and yet others destroyed. Considering recent scholarship calling for a shift from a human rights and diversity rhetoric in the archival conversation, I argue that the discursive disappearance or spectralization of Indigenous people plays a crucial role in dispossessing them of their lands, resources, and cultural heritage. Noting the tensions between a desire to be remembered and a longing for oblivion, I argue that the incorporation of records by or about Indigenous people into the national settler archival repository is crucial for the constitution of a settler historical archival memory (at the expense of an Indigenous one) that transforms Canadian national shame and guilt into national glory and honour. Conceptualizing the Canadian national archive as a haunted site of fear and desire, national guilt and national triumph, I
Thesis Chapters by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
TSpace Repository - University of Toronto , 2021
Provenance in place: archives, settler colonialism & the making of a global order explores the sy... more Provenance in place: archives, settler colonialism & the making of a global order explores the synergy between imperialism, settler colonialism, archives and the professional and academic field known as archival studies. In the introduction, “A critical rethinking of the intellectual and professional history of archival studies,” I interrogate the eurocentric story we tell ourselves about the discipline’s history from the French Revolution and the Dutch Manual (1898) to the first International Congress of Archivists & Librarians in Brussels in 1910 and the globalization of nation state archives in the 20th century. Critiquing the erasure of the colonial and imperial foundations of the discipline, I revisit the crucial role of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and Algerian Revolution (1954- 1962) in the making of archival studies and western modernity. By extension, I outline the need to rethink provenance by centering place not creator, particularly in settler colonial contexts where there can be no decolonization without land reclamation. I explicate this provenance in place approach through two cases: One is focused on British North America and settler Canada, and another on Palestine and the broader Arab world.
Part I, “‘Total archives’ for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada,” traces the settler colonial foundations of Canada’s state archives and archival profession in the era of Confederation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes connection between this history and the recent court cases between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Canadian government over archives and records. Part II, “‘that keening trajectory’: Nakba genealogies, archival representation and the Dr. Constantine Zurayk collection,” examines the politics of memorializing the Nakba and Arab anticolonial histories based on my experience archiving the collection at the American University of Beirut. It explores Zurayk’s theorizing of the 1948 Nakba (a term he is said to have coined) and the 1967 Naksa (Six Day War) in relation to Israeli archives and the Palestinian counter archive. Overall, I consider how a reconceptualized understanding of provenance in place can contribute to the decolonizing of archiving, archives and, therefore, of land and people in settler colonial contexts.
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Papers by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
https://barricadejournal.org/ramparts/76-years-later-a-documentary-nakba/
"In speaking of a 'documentary nakba'” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records . . ."
In the Field (blog of the Association of Canadian Archivists)
10 Jan 2023 9:30 AM
Thesis Chapters by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
Part I, “‘Total archives’ for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada,” traces the settler colonial foundations of Canada’s state archives and archival profession in the era of Confederation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes connection between this history and the recent court cases between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Canadian government over archives and records. Part II, “‘that keening trajectory’: Nakba genealogies, archival representation and the Dr. Constantine Zurayk collection,” examines the politics of memorializing the Nakba and Arab anticolonial histories based on my experience archiving the collection at the American University of Beirut. It explores Zurayk’s theorizing of the 1948 Nakba (a term he is said to have coined) and the 1967 Naksa (Six Day War) in relation to Israeli archives and the Palestinian counter archive. Overall, I consider how a reconceptualized understanding of provenance in place can contribute to the decolonizing of archiving, archives and, therefore, of land and people in settler colonial contexts.
https://barricadejournal.org/ramparts/76-years-later-a-documentary-nakba/
"In speaking of a 'documentary nakba'” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records . . ."
In the Field (blog of the Association of Canadian Archivists)
10 Jan 2023 9:30 AM
Part I, “‘Total archives’ for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada,” traces the settler colonial foundations of Canada’s state archives and archival profession in the era of Confederation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes connection between this history and the recent court cases between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Canadian government over archives and records. Part II, “‘that keening trajectory’: Nakba genealogies, archival representation and the Dr. Constantine Zurayk collection,” examines the politics of memorializing the Nakba and Arab anticolonial histories based on my experience archiving the collection at the American University of Beirut. It explores Zurayk’s theorizing of the 1948 Nakba (a term he is said to have coined) and the 1967 Naksa (Six Day War) in relation to Israeli archives and the Palestinian counter archive. Overall, I consider how a reconceptualized understanding of provenance in place can contribute to the decolonizing of archiving, archives and, therefore, of land and people in settler colonial contexts.