The neoliberal transformation of American economy and government has consistently devalued archives as public services, instead viewing them for their potential market value. This can be seen in the U.S. Office of Management and the Budget’s recent decision to close the Seattle National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) building in order to sell its property to housing developers and, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, “generate the highest and best value” for the land due to a building maintenance backlog.[1] Over the next four years, archival materials generated the Pacific Northwest will be shipped to NARA’s Kansas City, MI and Riverside, CA locations without input from local stakeholders and Indigenous governments across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The closure demonstrates neoliberalism’s consistent investment in profit over preservation. While a blow to the historical management of the Pacific Northwest, the closure of the Seattle NARA center is hardly surprising, and its callous reasoning aligns neoliberalism’s penchant for bureaucratic centralization, cuts to public spending, and mandate to generate revenue wherever an opening exists.
The OMB’s reasoning behind Seattle NARA closure represents the hegemonic saturation of neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism presents itself as the natural progression of capitalism, treating “the market” as an entity whose freedom matters more than citizens. This partially works to eliminate the possibility of other political formations, making the notion of an un-privatized world inconceivable. The famous quote commonly attributed to Fredric Jameson (and occasionally Slavoj Žižek) which opens Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism— “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism”—perfectly summarizes the pervasive sense of neoliberal hegemony in contemporary life.[2] Closing the Seattle NARA center for property development appears to be the only available option because neoliberalism closes off the possibility of a government investing in a building whose mission inherently does not generate revenue.
Fisher later notes that “emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’” and “reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency” in order to “make what was previous deemed to be impossible seem attainable.”[3] When confronting neoliberalism, there must be an alternative system to move towards. While escapes from neoliberal ideology can appear impossible, critiques of the system necessarily rely on imagined possibilities in order to reframe the current system. As part of a larger struggle to counteract and eventually overturn neoliberal policy and ideology, library and information studies workers can reclaim the imaginary as a liberating component of critical work. Introducing a special issue on neoliberalism in the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, Jamie A. Lee and Marika Cifor write that critiquing neoliberal policy should function as “a form of everyday intellectual work aimed at exposing the many ways that power operates and how it has produced the status-quo stories we have been made to buy into.”[4] As we “grapple with stark material realities through ongoing and largely unquestioned practices that continue to uphold inequalities and inequities,” archivists and LIS practitioners should interrogate the beneficiaries of power and decisions made by administrators.[5] How, for instance, was it decided that the Seattle NARA property would be best suited to developing what will surely be hideous buildings with luxury apartments above a Whole Foods? How does a facility which was by all accounts frequently visited and vitally important to certain community members become a burdensome budget?
Critiquing neoliberalism from the archival profession should go beyond only highlighting the corrupt relationship between private interests and public institutions by imagining an equitable structure. Though the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) and Society of American Archivists (SAA) issued a joint statement denouncing the OMB’s decision, their focus on the lack of information regarding the decision and its immediate negative impacts illustrate this form of limited critique. Had the CoSA and SAA gone further and envisioned a fully funded and functional archive, whose users’ needs are met because its workers are organized and protected, they would at the very least have created an image of an organizational ideal. Putting an imagined future into the field’s discourse moves institutional goals beyond the utility of each penny of funding and towards the construction of a stronger bond with the public and among the profession. These imagined archival possibilities are crucial to archivists advocating for immediate needs.
Of course, imagined futures are hardly the definitive solution to overcoming an economic and ideological hegemony, but they play a vital role to instigate immediate action. Rather, they serve as the starting point of enacting structural changes and building solidarity within and outside the profession towards a better future. The possibility of a more equitable and dignified world ignites the ability to act immediately, locally, and directly. David Harvey notes that capitalist powers “stumbled toward neoliberalism as the answer through a series of gyrations and chaotic experiments,” which is worth keeping in mind in striving for political and economic organizations which benefit humans over capital.[6] As LIS workers seek to decondition themselves and the public of neoliberal ideology, it’s important to understand that the “natural order” of neoliberalism was as erratic and risky as what will succeed it.
[1] Lacitis, Erik. “‘Terrible and Disgusting’: Decision to Close National Archives at Seattle a Blow to Tribes, Historians in 4 States.” The Seattle Times, January 25, 2020. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/terrible-and-disgusting-decision-to-close-national-archives-at-seattle-a-blow-to-tribes-historians-in-4-states/.
[2] Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? United Kingdom: Zero Books, 2009, page 2.
[3] Ibid 17.
[4] Lee, Jamie A., and Marika Cifor. “Evidences, Implications, and Critical Interrogations of Neoliberalism in Information Studies.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 2, no. 1 (April 6, 2019), page 4. https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/122.
[5] Ibid 4.
[6] Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, page 13.
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