Resisting Erasure
Photographic Archives and Black History in Canada
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20494097 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rachel Lobo (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Pages | 7-36 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Canadian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1180-3991 • E-ISSN: 1923-5291 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/ijcs.58.x.7 |
| OpenAlex | W3175714034 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 28 |
This article considers the historiographical challenges brought on by dislocation and, in response, shows how longstanding Black communities in Canada have collected and preserved photographs in order to combat institutionalized modes of erasure. Specifically, it investigates the role that nineteenth century photographs play in articulating Canada as a Black transnational space—part of the discourses of the Black diaspora and Black Atlantic. The main site of this investigation is the Alvin D. McCurdy fonds at the Archives of Ontario, a collection of photographs of communities in Amherstburg, Ontario—a major terminus of the Underground Railroad. Building on recent scholarship this study investigates the discursive continuity between archive and historical narratives, and reconceptualizes the "archive" to include alternative sites and materials for the reconstruction of historically marginalized groups. These "counterarchives" can perform a recuperative role in mapping the development of communal memory and in reinterpreting dominant narratives. This article explores how photographic archives can provide crucial visual documentation of the geographies of slavery, segregation, and dispossession, spatializing acts of resistance within the Canadian landscape (McKittrick 2013)
Archaeology · Art · Diaspora · Documentation · Erasure · Historiography · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Digital and Traditional Archives Management · Gender Studies · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Photography and Visual Culture
The African Photographic Archive
Colonialism/Postcolonialism
Playing in the dark
In Search of the Black Women's History Archive
Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order
Black Is a Country
Globalization and Race
Dispossessed Lives
Plantation Futures
The Bell-Sloman Collection at Brock University
Interference Archive
Image Matters
In the Privacy of our own Home
Camille Silvy’s Repertory
The Carte de Visite in the 1860s and the Serial Dynamic of Photographic Likeness
The Fluid Frontier
The Archive and the Repertoire
The Archival Turn in Feminism
Going Across the River
Amherstburg, Terminus of the Underground Railroad
Along the Archival Grain
Photography and Anthropology
A fluid frontier
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |