Critical Theory and Information Studies: Proposing a Holistic Approach

“For a long time, activists did not necessarily think that it mattered to take care of themselves in terms of what they eat, in terms of mental self-care, corporal self-care, and spiritual self-care...what mattered was the movement and that hurt a lot of us.”

-Angela Davis, On Radical Self-Care via Afropunk

In the chapter, “Praxis for the People: Critical Race Theory and Archival Practice” Rachel Winston writes about the reality of being a Black woman archivist. She writes, “I find myself fewer than five Black professional staff and the sole Black archivist in an entire library system at one of the largest universities in the country.”^{^[1]} What brings her to this role and what keeps her persisting through the difficulties she faces as an archivist is her identity as a Black woman. Winston rightly names the “twofold”^{^[2]} nature of whiteness in the archive. She writes about the first, “I feel its oppressive presence when I walk into the library building and when I walk into the archival stacks.”^{^[3]} As well as, the inability to “turn away or disengage”^{^[4]} with historical trauma of records. Winston uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a critical framework to determine archival praxis that, “create space for racially and nonracially marginalized voices to be elevated.”^{^[5]} She also names Black feminism (BF) as another important critical theory of future archival praxis because of the ethic of caring centering the notion that ideas cannot de divorced from the individuals who create and share them.

While I agree that CRT and BF have been essential critiques of power, economy, and white supremacy in relation to marginalizing oppression, I argue that neither address the significance or perspective of being a Black woman. These ideologies support and uplift the cause of undoing Black women’s oppression in context of “anti-capitalist praxis”^{^[6]} and “acknowledging the inherent politics of our work and the false pretense of archival neutrality.”^{^[7]} They speak mostly to the nonblack woman outsider. I argue that the inclusion of womanism in critical discourse along with CRT and Black feminism will create a holistic approach that help archivists find wholeness. Incorporating womanist methods along with CRT and BF, archivists may craft the space within themselves to find embodiment and a sense of self while encountering whiteness working in the archive.

CRT uncovers to the “bloody”^{^[8]} roots of the institutions like the archive. Black feminism challenges systems rooted in “economic exploitation, white privilege, and power.”^{^[9]} It resists all too often misrepresentations of Black women that influence law and policy. Womanism, a close cousin of Black feminism points Black women archivists (or any Black women who proclaim their life and witness) back to herself. In this way, doing womanism alongside Black feminism and CRT is practicing radical soul-care while physically encountering records of terror and joy and working with microagressive coworkers.

The line of womanism I am referring to is sourced from several writings by Alice Walker in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She makes the claim that “a womanist is aware of her own value.”^{^[10]} From this cultural center, Blackness is implicit. There is no need to preface it with “Black” as in Black feminism because the primary knowledge source is Black women’s intersectional experience. This concept comes from the legacy of honoring Black women’s life and witness.

Winston writes that she wants her work to be “an act of counternarrative by challenging the normalization of erasure.”^{^[11]} That task should no longer be completed with CRT and Black feminist framework alone. Partnering with methods from womanism, such as womanist counternarrative, by Emilie M. Townes offers that history can be told differently and language that emerges by centering the Black gaze is knowledge^{^[12]}. CRT and Black feminism work with the tendency for institutions and their representative to “forget”^{^[13]} the truth about racism and make circular requests for education. Townes writes, “it is not healthy–not even for the dominant elite–to fail to remember the textures of our common humanity…it is strategic in that to ‘forget’ is to be able to feign ignorance and lack of agency.”^{^[14]} CRT and Black feminism push Black archivists to serve in roles where they are subjected to isolation, gaslighting, and justifying to their colleague and audiences why the source of their/our anger and joy matters, as Winston describes.

Womanist methods push the caring approach beyond “simply acknowledging the labor of archivist processing and working with challenging or difficult material.”^{^[15]} it suggests that Black women’s labor should no longer be sacrificial,^{^[16]} rather it can exist to build the substance of Black women’s particularity.^{^[17]} I propose that the inclusion of womanism when seeking an archival praxis with CRT and Black feminism creates a holistic approach. Womanism affirms ethics, language and Spirit that challenge metaphysical notions of ageism, sexism, classism, colorism, homophobia, racism, and more.^{^[18]} Womanist praxis centers the complex experience of being and gifts Black women a chance at wholeness.