Archives, as repositories of culture and knowledge, are closely linked to colonial power, control, hegemony, and conquest. In recognizing the limitations and problems of conventional archives, scholars and artists offer counter-archiving...
moreArchives, as repositories of culture and knowledge, are closely linked to colonial power, control, hegemony, and conquest. In recognizing the limitations and problems of conventional archives, scholars and artists offer counter-archiving as a method of interrogating what constitutes an archive and the selective practices that continuously erase particular subjects. Unlike static, stable, and linear colonial archives, counter-archives are grounded in accountability and reciprocity. Similarly, the anarchive is concerned with what it can do in the present-future. As such, anarchiving is less a thing, then a process or an action. This article examines anarchiving as research-creation practices through three provocations: anarchiving as indeterminate transformation, anarchiving as felt, and anarchiving as response-ability. We examine a particular anarchiving project Instant Class Kit dedicated to radical pedagogies and social justice. Anarchiving is fundamentally about practicing an ethics based on response-ability, stewardship, care, and reciprocity that center relationships to land, territory, human, and more-than-human bodies.
