Archives are Never Neutral - Postmodern Archival theory and the Future of History

The common historiographical narrative (i.e., the history of the academic discipline of history) goes something like this for Sweden and other parts of northwestern Europe:

Until the mid-19th century, historians did not fully grasp what a historical source was. Instead, myths and popular understandings were often entwined in the academic writing of history. In 1825, the German historian Leopold von Ranke published a book called Histories of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, which was groundbreaking due to its use of sources primarily derived from archives. This led to the establishment of history as a source-based science, where we use contemporary sources from the time we study to reconstruct the past. This does not mean that all sources are deemed "trustworthy" in themselves, but archival records are continuously scrutinized through source criticism.

However, what this development has also led to is a notion of archives as neutral. From this perspective, history exists in the form of records in the archive. But what historians seldom reflect upon is the archives themselves, since they are not something that exists in nature. Rather, the existence of archives means that somebody has taken the time – and, more importantly, used resources – to save some documents from being obliterated or lost over time.

AI-generated picture of archival research

At least since the late 1990s, this perspective has gained a foothold among archival scholars. It’s no coincidence that, for instance, Terry Cook spent the last decade of his life writing about how archives should not be read as neutral tellers of truth, but rather as products of power. In this regard, archives are created through a decision that certain records are worth keeping. Even if this stems from a desire to "preserve history itself," that decision is always made by someone with interests and agency. Other times, archives are created due to institutions having legal obligations or a wish to control the narrative of the past in order to shape the future.

Classical historical source criticism is based on the notion of tendency in a record. This means that an archival source might have a tendency to portray certain actors, objects, or phenomena in a specific way to influence how people act. But what critical archival theory teaches us is that this may already have occurred at the point when an archive was created. The records themselves might not show tendency, but the very selection and inclusion of them in an archive makes certain stories possible to write – and others impossible.

Does this insight affect every historian? Perhaps, perhaps not. Not all historians work with written material or archive-based sources anymore. But it is striking that there still sometimes exists a notion of certain records as being either "neutral" or "biased," while we fail to apply the same critical lens to the archive itself. Maybe this is just me, viewing my dual role as both archivist and historian as uniquely valuable – but it might just be the case that history and archival science have much to learn from each other.

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