Resisting Erasure: Photographic Archives and Black History in Canada

Abstract

This article considers the historiographical challenges brought on by dislocation and, in response, shows how longstanding Black communities in Canada have collected and preserved photographs in order to combat institutionalized modes of erasure. Specifically, it investigates the role that nineteenth century photographs play in articulating Canada as a Black transnational space—part of the discourses of the Black diaspora and Black Atlantic. The main site of this investigation is the Alvin D. McCurdy fonds at the Archives of Ontario, a collection of photographs of communities in Amherstburg, Ontario—a major terminus of the Underground Railroad. Building on recent scholarship this study investigates the discursive continuity between archive and historical narratives, and reconceptualizes the "archive" to include alternative sites and materials for the reconstruction of historically marginalized groups. These "counterarchives" can perform a recuperative role in mapping the development of communal memory and in reinterpreting dominant narratives. This article explores how photographic archives can provide crucial visual documentation of the geographies of slavery, segregation, and dispossession, spatializing acts of resistance within the Canadian landscape (McKittrick 2013).