{"id":52,"date":"2017-02-27T11:08:23","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T18:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/?p=52"},"modified":"2017-02-27T11:08:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T18:08:23","slug":"life-narratives-and-archives-reclaiming-and-rewriting-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/2017\/02\/27\/life-narratives-and-archives-reclaiming-and-rewriting-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Narratives and Archives: Reclaiming and Rewriting the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life narratives create a view into a person\u2019s life, which could breed understanding and empathy. Archival work might be an effective resource when growing the public knowledge of a certain person or group. The Slate<\/a> has an article that shows this powerful work archives can do, and how that work can be used to add to the story of people who have been killed or who died naturally. This is important because it allows people who have died to have their stories told\u2014and to challenge any pre-existing thoughts or ideas told. In Missing Sarah<\/em><\/a>, a similar method is used\u2014a method to look at diary entries and letters to change how the media depicts Sarah. De Vries<\/a> uses Sarah\u2019s writing to reclaim her life and make sense of her disappearance. This allows for Sarah<\/a> to have a certain indirect voice and power over how she is remembered. Through De Vries<\/a>\u2019s writing and her collection of Sarah\u2019s personal writing, De Vries is able to reclaim Sarah\u2019s past and change her disappearance from something that was a consequence of her actions, thus not important, into a disappearance that was wrong and important to address\u2014her life was valuable and should be treated as such.<\/p>\n

Similarly in the Slate<\/a>, Rebecca Onion writes about CSI:Dixie\u2014a collection of information about the deaths of people in South Carolina during the 19th<\/sup> century. Onion<\/a> mentions the story of Sylvia, a woman who was a slave that was killed by her \u201cmaster\u201d, Gabriel Coates. The transcript provided by the CSI:Dixie<\/a> describes Sylvia\u2019s encounter with Coates, Sylvia was hit for ignoring Coates\u2019s orders and Coates was deemed not responsible for her death\u2014in other words, Sylvia was murdered for defending her son. By knowing her story, and by the archival work that allowed her story to be told and share, Sylvia<\/a>\u2019s story is reclaimed. The archival work becomes redemptive in that it allows the public to see the truth of her death<\/a>. Through Sylvia’s\u00a0story<\/a>, the lack of conviction of her murderer and her death change from being forgotten\u2014and can be a story the public can access and read.<\/p>\n

Through Sarah<\/a> and Sylvia<\/a> it becomes evident that archives can be used rewrite and reclaim a person\u2019s story; they can make a forgotten and ignored story into something accessible and public. Sarah<\/a> and Sylvia<\/a> represent a larger group of people, people who have been \u201cmisremembered\u201d or written off. Life narratives and archives explain a person\u2019s story, they make a person more than just a name mentioned in passing. Without this archive of cases<\/a> in South Carolina during the 19th<\/sup> century, Coates would have remained guiltless and Sylvia would have remained a disobedient servant. It is doubtless that there are other stories in which people are originally misrepresented and then through information stored in archives are reimagined (i.e. the idea that \u201cthe truth will come out\u201d). Altogether, it seems apparent that archives hold information that can be critical in adapting the way a person has been or is viewed by the public\u2014or whether that person is seen at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life narratives create a view into a person\u2019s life, which could breed understanding and empathy. Archival work might be an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/gabi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}