n.an approach to archival work that emphasizes care, compassion, and awareness of the people associated with collections, often with an eye toward the promotion of healing, equity, and social justiceCaswell and Cifor 2016, 37Practising radical empathy with users means acknowledging the deep emotional ties users have to records, the affective impact of finding—or not finding—records that are personally meaningful, and the personal consequences that archival interaction can have on users.Caswell and Cifor 2016, 41In summary, a feminist ethics of care approach places the archivist in a web of relationships with each of the concerned parties and posits that the archivist has an affective responsibility to responsibly empathize with each of the stakeholders. The act that creates the record binds the record creator with the record subject, the subject with the larger community, and the archivist with all involved parties. In this light, radical empathy can guide each archival decision. This approach not only acknowledges the affective labour that many archivists already perform, but places such affective labour at the centre of the archival endeavour.Smith 2018, 9–10This is where I find radical empathy and the feminist ethics of care such a revolutionary and powerful practice—its [sic] the ability to bring your whole self to the work, and to see that as an asset and not a potential liability. It is the ability to examine our own thoughts, feelings, biases, and privileges in relation to the collections we steward, the institutions where we are located, and the communities we do or do not engage with, and why.Laurent and Hart 2018, 17If we act on this opportunity for radical empathy and achieving trauma-informed archival practice, this challenge could be a chance to put the community first, to find out how we could support them, and in turn leave the archivist feeling more supported. This is a moment to provide more transparent archival description, using evidence to show records did exist, describing what is known to have existed, and explaining why they were destroyed to fill a gap for the community. ¶ Another example of extending radical empathy in the archives and making trauma-informed decisions is switching from basing decision-making processes on what is best for the archive and instead getting to know the community you’re trying to represent.Caswell and Cifor 2021, 4Radical empathy is about recognizing our personal roles within power structures, dismantling oppressive structures (including, especially, the structures we may personally benefit from), and rebuilding liberatory structures that serve us all. We can use radical empathy to interrogate intersecting structures of violence, both public and private, taken together, as always already political. We must insist that care work leverages personal experience to dismantle systemic oppressions.Lassere and Whyte 2021, 22Radical empathy lends a feminist intersectional lens to digital forensics practices, which originate in law enforcement. Rather than focusing on the gathering and retention of evidence, it asks us to center human experience in archives, and consider all users, creators, subjects, and communities that the existing records affect. Here, radical empathy points to a lack of care and ethical accountability on the part of the archivist in managing sensitive personal information. Building upon recent work, case studies, and understanding of sensitive information in born-digital archival material, we recognize a need to hold ourselves accountable to creators, users, subjects, and marginalized communities; define the risks data and our workflows pose towards those groups; and either allocate resources, training, and human labor to the management of sensitive data or collect what we can appropriately manage.Godoy 2021, 6In order to discourage a “white savior” complex that is already prevalent in our profession, I believe an Anzaldúa or BIPOC and Queer lens needs to be used when implementing this practice of radical empathy. This means all archivists need to move beyond merely feeling empathy to direct action that redistributes the power and resources needed for BIPOC and Queer communities to lead archival projects and storytelling.Demeter 2021, 17The uniquely challenging content of the Bundy collection presents a tension between access and responsible stewardship because of its traumatic, emotional, and affective qualities. The inclination that I have observed in myself and archives staff to protect others and ourselves from these qualities can lead to harmful actions, from withholding information from users, to staff siloing and oversaturating themselves as “experts” in the collection in order to protect their fellow colleagues from overexposure to the collection. However, this protective urge in many ways comes from an affective inclination toward care and may also be examined as an invitation to use the framework of radical empathy to explore, present, and interpret the collection.Baxter 2024, 13–14If we consider radical empathy and love as foundational principles for our work, it transforms all of the archival work we perform. Appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, access, outreach—all of them become love in practice.
