Archives in Motion: Transitional Sites of Identity in Narratives of Displacement

Abstract

Institutional systems steeped in colonialist and essentializing language (and practice) produce narratives of displacement that are reductionist, rendering the displaced as one-dimensional. Through narratives focused on victimhood, these narratives are used against people who are displaced, situating them with fixed identities of vulnerability. Autobiographical narratives of displacement, however, can challenge those reductionist narratives by representing the complexity of displacement experience. By doing so, autobiographical displacement narratives highlight the ways that displacement is only one aspect of identity, thereby subverting the victim trope and asking us to consider the layered ways one experiences displacement. In this article, I describe the ways that rhetorical practices within autobiographical narratives such as interiority, temporality, and embodiment transgress institutional narratives. By theorizing archives in motion as counter narrative to constructions of vulnerability and precarity, we can examine alternative ways of reporting history and documenting identities, across transnational contexts, with the potential to challenge understandings of historical events through archival content and practice.