Archival Silences
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to witness, does it make a sound?
The answer to this old enigma has been debated for years. It’s truly amazing how something so simple can baffle the mind and keep our brains spinning for a justification of “yes” or “no.” The thing is, we’ll never be able to know. Technically speaking, if it fell and made a noise without a soul to listen, the occurrence was simply… silent.
We live in a world so busy and so hectic that our brains have literally adapted to tuning things out as to avoid an overload of information. We have become sensitized to different things that we either do not recognize or feel due to the other stimuli around us. The very same thing can happen in our current method of keeping information: archives. Not every story can be retold just as not every feeling we experience can be relived. The phenomenon known as “Archival Silences” is a term for the empty space in our data libraries which can have a profound effect on the memory (or lack there of) of our society.
The causes of “archival silences” are almost impossible to label because there are so many, but there are a few reasons why they occur the most. One cause has to do with authority. History is written by the winners and those who can speak their mind in a way that makes them heard. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. MLK was one of the greatest speakers in United States history simply because he was the antithesis of meek. Every word that came from his mouth was filled with passion and initiative for the movement he was leading. Statements of power tend to subdue ones of lesser importance and magnitude. This act of suppression has been come to be known as “simple and perfect silencing.” In situations of great oppression such as terrorism and slavery this idea is greatly illustrated. When one force has a great amount of power, the opposing force is given the choice to either be quiet or be killed.
Sometimes a Wikipedia article can contain a gap in content which can be closely related to an archival silence. Encyclopedia style format does not allow for secondary information that is not purely fact based. This can prevent certain facts from making their way into an article and create a small void on a specific topic. As time progresses and the article is continually revised, information that did not get implemented into the first draft could be lost forever.
If I was in charge of the archival data at Wake Forest University, I would make it a priority to limit silences. In my opinion, things that happen at Wake Forest have a much lower tendency to be subject to silences because this is a campus of leaders. Every student wants his or her voice to be heard, not forgotten. Every student wants to make a difference here, not just fit in with a crowd. With advances in technology, we have many things that can save our data which correspond to our lives at Wake Forest. Laptops to store our work, Spotify to remember our playlists from freshman year, Facebook to remember the first tailgate of the football season, and many other banks of information that are always on hand. However, something I would institute to make archival silences extinct are diaries for each class. Each diary is a blank slate for members of the Wake Forest community to write down their thoughts, feelings, and experiences for remembrance going forward.
Just as many trees will continue to fall without sound, thousands of events go silent every day. In order for us to be able to limit these gaps, we must be willing to not only share the information we have with each other, but also deliver it powerfully.
http://americanliterature.dukejournals.org/content/85/4/661.abstract
