2024/09/03 by Purdom Lindblad, Elizabeth Grumbach, Christina Boyles · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Mathematics, Computing, and Information Processing
paper · pdf · doi:10.3998/jep.6168
openalex publication_date 2024/09/03 · openalex created_date 2024/09/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
In her workshop “Time, Memory, and Justice in Marginalized Communities”, Rasheedah Phillips proposed, “Oral futures is about speaking into existence what you want to have happen.” Upon the precipice of this moment, where catastrophe and hope intersect in unprecedented fashion, what futures will our digital work speak into existence? And, what is at stake if we do not work to shape that future together? This article will explore and interrogate the possibilities and challenges of reparative digital archival practices, building on the authors’ roundtable at the 2023 Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) conference. Authors bring experience from academia, libraries & archives, and museums to name disparities and propose alternative practices which address such injustices. For our conversation, we draw on the work of Caswell, Escobar, Jackson, Johnson, and Noble to intentionally invoke a rhizomatic, intersectional understanding of repair. We will incorporate visions of repair as they exist in current scholarship: challenging ownership (Phillips, Nowviskie); revealing what has been long-hidden in datasets (Johnson, Gallon); reframing failure (Caswell, Crosby, Jackson). We seek to address questions such as: what does it mean to engage in reparative work, and how do reparative practices become embodied in self and community? How are (digital and material) resources generated and shared? When does repair falter or fail? And, importantly, is repair possible, and if not, can we imagine together a new guiding principle or tenet? The structure of our intervention follows ASU’s Lincoln Center Design Studio model, which consists of conversational “movements” that first invoke divergent ideas, perspectives, and stories from participants, and then trace convergent themes, directions, and aspirational questions about how we shape the future we want to see.