n.the support of memory through the transmission and preservation of historical evidence, including by agents other than archivists, with the intent of centering marginalized voices in order to challenge established narratives and promote healing, equity, peace, and/or justiceGould and Harris 2014, 4–5Reckoning with the past may intentionally or unintentionally have destructive outcomes. It may widen the gap between people, spread hatred or prejudice, exploit wounds from the past to instigate violence, or it may support peacebuilding, the healing of wounds, a forgetting of immediate pain and trauma, and a preventing of the recurrence of injustice. The purpose of what we refer to as ‘liberatory memory work’ is to achieve the latter. It is premised on the need to work with the past, to insist on accountability, to acknowledge and address pain and trauma, and to reveal hidden dimensions of human rights violations—these are key to preventing a recurrence. ¶ The powerful will tend to use memory resources to fulfill the end of remaining powerful. Memory work dominated by particular interests—whether of the state, of the private sector or of civil society—is unavoidably elitist and creates metanarratives that drown out voices that cause discomfort, voices that are marginalized. Liberatory memory work is about troubling such metanarratives and making space for ‘other’ voices. It may be about dealing with uncomfortable pasts that trouble structures of power, even in a democracy. As such it may be seen to be in opposition to the state, it may be underfunded, and it may be lonely for memory workers. Certainly it will always be complex and painful. ¶ The aim of liberatory memory work is to release societies from cycles of violence, prejudice and hatred and instead to create vibrant and conscious societies that strive to achieve a just balance of individual and collective rights. Ultimately this work is about building a just and inclusive future that transforms the norms, attitudes and ideals which informed oppression and/or conflictual pasts. Liberatory memory work is about making a liberatory future.Caswell 2020, 159The first and most crucial aspect of liberatory memory work is mobilizing records to repair past harms through the redistribution of resources. Given the two foundational sins of the US—the genocide of Indigenous people and the enslavement of African people—liberatory memory work in an American context must seek to repair these harms by mobilizing records in service of (1) Indigenous sovereignty and land reclamation and (2) material reparation for descendants of enslaved Africans.Caswell 2021, 97–98Archivists interested in enacting liberatory memory work may abandon the past and the future for the now. Our labor can be harnessed in the contemporary moment as a disruption of both dominant white progress narratives and cycles of oppression that inequitably target BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. We should engage in liberatory memory work, not with the unrealistic hopes that our interventions will lead to some brighter future (given our full knowledge of the systems of oppression baked into the institutions that govern society), but rather, with knowledge that doing the work in the now is liberatory in and of itself.Qvortrup and Giraldo 2022, 207We centre the voices and experiences of Martha, Jorge, and their family in this article to show the work a record can do in a context of oblivion and to highlight the work of the recordkeeper. Relevant here is not only the archive itself but also, above all, the documentation practices behind its creation and the meanings attributed to them, the contexts of production, and the use of the archive. We argue that creating and preserving these archives of enforced disappearance act as liberatory memory work (LMW)—an instinct of the families against forces of impunity and oblivion.Ganjavi 2023, 326Exploring the context of Colombia, South America, Qvortrup and Giraldo argue that the creation and preservation of personal archives of enforced disappearance serve as acts of liberatory memory work and as means for families to resist repression and collective forgetting. Qvortrup and Giraldo demonstrate that liberatory memory work is an active reality in Colombia, operating on an individual level, surpassing transitional justice frameworks, and transforming victims into custodians of records, providing future generations with the opportunity for historical accountability.
