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Silences

Definition

“A gap in the (historical) record resulting from the unintentional or purposeful absence or distortion of documentation.” This goes for both the documentation as well as processes and institutional policies.

Definition source: Society of American Archivists (n.d.). Dictionary of Archives Terminology.

Stakes

part of: opacity, discrimination

related to: representation

Silences cause a skewed narrative of history, in which certain narratives are not acknowledged and/or included.

Where does it occur in the lifecycle?

1 - Set up

4 - Analyse

Questions to consider throughout your work

  • What gaps exist in current research?
  • What gaps are you trying to fill in your research? Time period, geography, actors, concepts?
  • What is your primary source data and have you considered all the advantages and shortcomings of this data source?
  • Are there gaps and/or silences in your data collection process?

Examples

  • Mimi Onuoha (2016), Library of Missing Datasets.
  • Globalise Namebooks1
  • Mrinalini Luthra, Konstantin Todorov, Charles Jeurgens, & Giovanni Colavizza (2024). Unsilencing colonial archives via automated entity recognition. In Journal of Documentation, pp. 1080 – 1105. arXiv:2210.02194

Good-better-best practices

Good Better Best
Discuss silences of the archive and/or sources with your research team. Document acknowledgement and discussion of silences, gaps and absences in your dataset. Document silences, gaps and absences in your research – during setup, collection, and processing stages. It is helpful to reflect on your Positionality, through description of policies and practices that led to your research (outcomes).2
Recognise archival silences in source utilized and notify users about them in your documentation and contextualisation, and/or visualisations. Speak to others (communities and/or academics) to understand the impact and extent of the silences. See: Collaboration. Employ tools that allow you to tackle and overcome past silences. For example, descriptions of archival records which were often the gateways for research have very often been biased and only bear mention of persons that were of relevance to the archival creator. Technologies like HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) help you bypass document descriptions and allow you to search for person mentions in certain archives.3
Scout for and incorporate alternative sources to imbalances of the source. Actively make – tackling silences, exploring alternative source material, and involving alternate perspectives on sources- part of your research objective and plan and budget for these activities.

Resources

  • Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon Press.
  • Sherman, Jihan, Romi Morrison, Lauren Klein, and Daniela Rosner. “The Power of Absence: Thinking with Archival Theory in Algorithmic Design.” Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM, July 2024, 214–23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660690.

  1. This dataset features a skewed gender representation where only a small minority of women is featured in the sources. The dataset (and its corresponding documentation and data-envelope) of the Namebooks of the Dutch East India Company (1730-1794) can be found here: https://hdl.handle.net/10622/DITM0Z ↩

  2. Adapted from Archives for Black Lives, Anti-Racist Description Resources (2019). ↩

  3. Given you know exactly what you’re looking for. ↩