RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage reviews books, reports, new periodicals, databases, websites, blogs, and other electronic resources, as well as exhibition, book, and auction catalogs pertaining directly and indirectly to the fields of rare book librarianship, manuscripts curatorship, archives management, and special collections administration. Publishers, librarians, and archivists are asked to send appropriate publications for review or notice to the Reviews Editor.
Scott Cline. Archival Virtue: Relationship, Obligation, and the Just Archives. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 2021. Softcover, 212p. $55.00 (ISBN: 9781945246715).
Scott Cline’s Archival Virtue: Relationship, Obligation, and the Just Archives is a shining example of the non-theistic religiosity that often surrounds professional discussions and applications of social justice frameworks in the contemporary archives discipline. In many ways, it is essentially a re-hashing of the progressive-collectivist streams of thought that have dominated academy-led discourses in recent years (especially after the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder), where personal penance and atonement—i.e. doing “the work”—serve as the bedrock for redressing the wrongs of the past and ameliorating ongoing oppressions. But even if Archival Virtue represents yet another attempt to expiate the sins of archival whiteness, hetero-patriarchy, or colonialism, its real contribution to the field is the language it proffers around archival ethics and morality. The primary audience here are Cline’s fellow archivists, to whom Cline seems mostly intent on providing a philosophically grounded and morally consistent approach to archival work in an existence full of worrisome complexity. At the occasional risk of inflating the public recognition and social stakes of that work, as well as overplaying the relevance of moral philosophy to archivists’ individual attitudes and everyday work settings, Cline clearly and engagingly makes the case for what he believes will create more just and justice-infused archival practices and institutions for all. In doing so, Cline offers a fresh theoretical perspective that often considers practicalities but is mostly aimed at influencing archivists’ hearts and minds.
Archival Virtue builds on Cline’s previous spiritual and religiously-tinged archival scholarship that is similarly focused on questions of ethics, morality, and how archives might help produce “the good” in society. As the founding archivist of the Seattle Municipal Archives and an Archival Studies educator at the University of Washington’s iSchool, Cline’s insight into the archives profession carries a lot of weight and he regularly uses examples from his career to illustrate points and display how one might infuse their values in their work. He interweaves these stories with an impressive command and incorporation of theological and philosophical perspectives from a range of contemporary and classic sources, as well as relevant archival studies scholarship that grapples with persistent questions of ethics and morality in the field. The overarching argument that Cline makes is that certain virtues “are required of archivists as they navigate and negotiate power structures while concurrently building meaningful relationships that foster a sense of common good and create a profession whose collective outlook is the vision of a moral society” (13). Indeed, Cline insists that “if we do not associate archival work with broader efforts at making our part of the world manifestly kinder and more just, then the project of archives is a failure” (171).
To aid this process along, Cline sets about constructing a cosmology of archival virtues organized in the discussion under the subcategories of archival being, archival citizenship, and archival spirituality. Archival being concerns “the manner in which archivists are engaged in the world, both individually and collectively,” and represents “the idealized, fundamental, permanent reality exemplifying what archivists do as well as the attitude and commitments they embrace in shouldering archival work and its many manifestations” (21). Archival citizenship is composed of characteristics like trustworthiness, professionalism, difference, and care, which “can create a sense of citizenship and belonging that benefits the profession and our various stakeholders” (55). Archival spirituality has to do with the possibility of transcending ourselves and our work and making the archival endeavor about “freedom and responsibility, dignity and human creativity, character and conduct, caring and doing” (125). In Cline’s estimation, these all point to “a holistic approach to archives” and “accepting the spiritual nature of archival being, understanding the spiritual impact of discovery, and recognizing that records are weighted with spiritual power we cannot begin to fully understand” (145).
Much of Archival Virtue's content is spent defining and explicating the constituent terms of this constellation of ideas through analogy or transposition with similar concepts from other fields. For example, there are several instances where Cline borrows theoretical models from the medical science and health services scholarship, offering interesting, if not always congruent, juxtapositions while developing ideas related to concepts like care, service, and community. Most of this concept building lands gracefully, but in several instances it falls flat. Case in point: a discussion on “beauty” as a component of archival validity vastly overstates how an archival appraisal report can embody this quality and seems an awkward choice when there are many other aspects of archival work and archival collections that could have been employed to better illustrative effect (105-106). In fact, archival appraisal shows up repeatedly in these cross-disciplinary comparisons, probably because it is one of the few incipient archival functions that has received a preponderance of theoretical consideration (for better or worse). Similarly, certain core concepts like justice, memory, obligation, genuine encounter, and respect of the “the other” are recycled throughout the narrative, often finding apotheosis in exegetic statements that border on the poetic. For instance, in describing his idea of archival spirituality, Cline writes, “It is our inexorable desire and search for meaning and purpose in life, our pursuit of authenticity and genuineness, and an openness to encounter with the other that is characterized by empathy, compassion, and love” (145).
Despite the high-minded and genuinely inspiring rhetoric, it is hard to say if Archival Virtue goes much further beyond cheerleading for archivists to do better and be better. Imbuing archival work and workers with a sense of moral obligation may indeed activate an archivist’s conscientiousness by connecting their decisions and actions to a larger purpose and mission, but there is no reason to believe that the activation of such a moral commitment, even if somehow catalyzed across the entire archival enterprise, would have any impact on the underlying structural forces that create and perpetual injustice at the societal level. Indeed, there is a strain in contemporary archival scholarship that seems to consider any measurable or objective advance toward justice an illusion, that all efforts to redress historical wrongs are futile and only end up perpetuating injustice, and that nothing short of obliterating mainstream institutions and anything linked with the current establishment and then starting over is worth considering. At the very least Cline’s vision appreciates the role of human agency, even if at times it overestimates archivists’ capacity to comprehend or effect social change.
Similarly, the insistence that an archivist’s personal ethics and morality necessarily have a bearing on their ability to perpetuate archival virtue and facilitate justice-based outcomes is a specious claim that Cline makes more than a few times throughout the narrative. Here the credibility of this argumentation is bound up in various ways with Cline’s perspective and his intended audience of contemporary archival professionals, a group that demonstrates a profound uniformity of values and viewpoints on social justice, all underwritten by rigidly enforced political and ideological assumptions and codes of speech typically held dear by liberal middle class academics. This is not to say that Cline is just telling us what we want to hear, but he most certainly is preaching to the choir, and Cline’s narrative often approaches prescriptively didactic levels by insisting on what archivists “must” and “should” and do to alter their very personalities and values to comply with the vision for archives that he lays out. This will not be a problem for anyone who accepts the underlying assumptions of that vision, but, in the interest of justice as fairness, a counter or parallel argument can and should be made for archivists to simply be good at their jobs. I do not know how anyone could reasonably argue that moral litmus tests (or the appearance of such) would make archives a more attractive or fulfilling profession.
On the upside, Archival Virtue becomes exceptional in Cline’s willingness to engage (albeit in carefully qualified language) with overtly spiritual themes and heady ideas about concepts like transcendence that do not necessarily fit under the current acceptable social justice gospel messaging. As Cline indicates, this type of analysis is mostly disparaged or ignored in academic fields that sometimes have a tendency to take themselves too seriously (like Archival Studies), so it is crucial that someone with his credibility has dared to tread in this territory. In this regard, Archival Virtue is a victory because it stretches the Archival Studies discourse in new theoretical directions and offers researchers another point of reference to begin considering big existential questions about why we do what we do.
- Bradley J. Wiles, PhD, Northern Illinois University Library