Body of Evidence: Time and Desire in Embodied Archives

Abstract

In this article, I bring a feminist geographic analysis of embodied life and desire into a study of archives. Drawing on my experience as a library and archives professional and feminist geographer navigating the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I use two examples from UNC’s Wilson Library. I argue that archives are lived, messy spaces where history unfolds not linearly, but in proximity to bodies—bodies who physically handle materials before and after they may become “archival,” who make connections between actors or events throughout time and space, and whose lived experience and desires shape how they interact with archives. Archives do not merely exist as “the archive,” but are constantly being made through the interactions and desires of people across time and space. From this premise, we who utilize archives can be attentive to the labor of archival work that is often erased in scholarship and consider how embodied life shapes a non-linear temporality in archives.