Archives in Common: Migrant Practices / Knowledge / Memory was formulated as the pandemic emerged. As a public humanities project, it has different overlapping goals, of which two of the most pressing are: 1) supporting, expanding, and helping to disseminate mutual aid initiatives devised by community activists through their audiovisual and textual documentation; and 2) facilitating spaces that foster the transmission, sharing, and dissemination of indigenous knowledges, practices, and memories. Conceptually, this project seeks to answer questions such as: How does one create an archive in common that is consistent with the mutual aid ethics? What purpose does this archive serve? Who are its publics? Archives in Common seeks to dismantle the walls that separate the public university from the communities that the university serves, hence the material answers to these questions—a work in progress—attempt to put in practice the notion of “the common.”
Archives in Common defines the archive not only as a place or as a series of operations, but also as a practice—one that allows us to create and imagine collaboratively, strengthening solidarity and mutual aid networks within our communities.
Read about the Archives in Common project by Faculty Leader Ángeles Donoso Macaya on Humanities for All website here.
