Bomb the Archive! A Critical Feminist Approach to Alternative Historicizing

Abstract

With the recent slew of efforts to reform museums and construct alternative H/histories and archives of/for traditionally unacknowledged groups, anti-oppression activists and workers have often forgotten to trouble the underlying assumption of H/historicizing itself. This thesis draws from diverse resources such as feminist new materialist quantum physics, posthumanism, anti-oppression organizing, activist practices, postcolonial studies, efforts to dismantle rape culture, queering time, problematics of canonizing and ideas of chosen separatism in order to begin troubling the underlyingly assumed practice (What does H/historicizing do? What structural power stratifications does it uphold? How and does it change when it is from/for typically marginalized groups? Why is this a default strategy?) and to work toward transformative possibilities from/for/with/of difference.