Can an archive be revolutionary?: how to document radical aspirations in a time of dissensus

Abstract

ABSTRACT Can an archive be revolutionary? To answer this question, I turn to a set of archives and histories of social movements that were driven by women, radicals, and those seeking revolutionary historical changes. Through an argument that moves between scholarly conversations in the history of feminism in the United States and the histories of militant nationalism in India, I consider how archives have influenced histories of social movements. Archives, in their widest forms, should generate historical narratives that are open to revision. These sites for generating dissensus are an urgent necessity in a time of declining democratic and liberatory norms.