Grasping the inappropriable disputes over use value of archives

Abstract

How should we think about our practices as researchers, archivists, and theoreticians in co-existence and in “phase” with our environment? How to position oneself from an ecosophic perspective of the common as a way of being in the world? What forms of organization, activation, and even common production are possible from this perspective? Both natural and social resources – human and non-human – cannot be thought of in a fragmented or divided up manner. As Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui puts it, “... the social sciences – along with several others – should focus on creating the conceptual, technical, and material tools to resist the pillaging, both of material resources and of people (labor of hands, brains) or, at least, help us to survive to it.”