n.the concept in archival theory of the absence of bias from influences such as politics, identity, power, culture, or other factorsZinn 1977, 20The archivist, even more than the historian and the political scientist, tends to be scrupulous about his neutrality, and to see his job as a technical job, free from the nasty world of political interest: a job of collecting, sorting, preserving, making available, the records of the society. But I will stick by what I have said about other scholars, and argue that the archivist, in subtle ways, tends to perpetuate the political and economic status quo simply by going about his ordinary business. His supposed neutrality is, in other words, a fake.Spear 1984, 81As sentient, conscious, presumably responsible people, we cannot avoid making political decisions. The concepts of neutrality and objectivity are impossible to achieve and, more often than not, smoke screens to hide what are really political decisions in support of the status quo. Inaction can have political consequences as far reaching as action. Whatever we do, or do not do, is political.Larade and Pelletier 1993, 100Our treatment will examine the process by which sexist language in particular was analysed by contemporary feminist research, which allows us some economy as a locus for research in this area: information professionals and librarians were among the first to experiment with gender equality in language. By "experimentation" is meant the stages of identifying and analysing the inequities of language and proposing alternative constructs, such as neutrality, to the work of archival description.Jimerson 2009, 137-138Recognizing this power that archivists wield in the universe of knowledge, some have been tempted to seek pseudo-scientific methods of distancing themselves from their decisions. They want to believe in their neutrality. When exposed with their hands on the controls, they may wish to echo the Wizard of Oz, who told Dorothy and her friends, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”Fintland 2016, 152Archives are often regarded as repositories for historical sources. Such an understanding of, and approach to, archives may have supported the view of the archivist as a neutral servant or a manager of the truth. Hilary Jenkinson, who stressed the neutrality of the archivist, called for the good archivist to embody a multitude of qualifications including, interestingly enough, being a bit of a linguist. According to Ketelaar, archivists and external users of the records such as historians share this view.Shein and Lapworth 2016, 8When viewed through the lens of postmodernism, Jenkinson’s stance on the absolute impartiality of archivists and archives is untenable, as is the absolute truth or neutrality of the historical record itself.Winn 2017This is not to suggest that objectivity in description is an unworthy goal. We should be clear, however, that true neutrality is an impossible aspiration, because we as archivists are individual practitioners called upon to distill the historic record through the inescapable lens of our personal worldviews. These unexamined paradigms shape our values, which determine what we collect, present, study, and name.Dearborn 2022, 264The Ohio Public Policy Archives acknowledges that archives are not neutral and the pursuit for neutrality in archival collection and description has further underrepresented, maligned, and misrepresented communities and people.deGraffenreid 2024, 291Intentionally prioritizing inclusive practices is a direct challenge to the idea of archival neutrality. It requires an admission that “neutral” legacies of prioritization inherently favored investing resources into collections of powerful, influential, or famous donors, and therefore, reinforcing hegemonic power structures through archival labor. Choosing not to intentionally prioritize collections representing underdocumented perspectives due to “neutrality” of the archival process is a fictitious and self-deceptive active choice.Manis and Wilde 2024, 900An enduring approach to managing these contrasting needs is Mark Greene and Dennis Meissner’s 2005 “More product, less process” strategy, which advocated for limited descriptive effort in favor of greater discoverability (Greene and Meissner 2005). Further underlying such perspectives and their application, though, is the belief that archivists ideally remain neutral and leave the research to researchers. As one stop along the neutrality debate spectrum, this emphasis on staying out of research remains a subject of scrutiny, particularly in light of social justice and decolonizing perspectives on libraries and archives.
