matriarchives

In traditional hetheheteronormative and feminist philosophical discussions, archives have been a topic of extensive analysis. Notable authors, including Jaques Derrida and Michel Foucault, have explored the concept of archives through the lenses of heteronormative thought and discontinuity, respectively. In the feminist field, scholars like Julieta Kirwood and Ariella Azoulay have proposed critical methods, including counter-archive and potential storytelling. Saidiya Hartman has also explored the possibility of using fiction in archives. Recently, documentation centers and repositories have emerged that aim to preserve memories that do not align with the patriarchal ideal of nationhood, including archives on women, queer, or indigenous nations. These archives aim to represent those who are not white, male, or from a privileged social class.

Indeed, expanding and diversifying the themes of the documentary collections opens gaps toward the recognition and plural and fair human representation. However, we cannot continue following the same path, thinking we will arrive at a different port. I mean that the processes and methods of consignment and creation of the archives require a revision and a reconsideration, which makes it possible to think about the preservation of memory concerning the historiographical processes, which from the outset is proposed as a decolonial fracture. Understanding that standardized consignment systems, although they allow ordering and access to documents, do so by prioritizing diffusion and propagation without recognizing that the processes of articulating memory and writing history are not neutral and are actually, an exercise in power.

If we continue taking documents that diverge and do not fit into the traditional notions of gender, race, and social class, as is the case of Josefina’s archive, and we organize them using the standardized-universal laws (even with their variants) proposed by archivists. In that case, It is necessary then to consider that beforehand, we are going to apply categories under which the archives have been constituted throughout history, and therefore identity has been given to the nation, to the concept of homeland, and to categories of analysis of art. that do not allow us to visualize how women have been part of the historical processes.

I am not proposing the loss of the archive form as a possibility to preserve and conserve memories; my proposal is an active form of resistance, in which I propose a review of the concept of “matriarchive” and the method of matriarchive: INES, Intersectional Expanded System, as a critical stance against traditional-patriarchal archiving methods. Julieta Kirwood suggests that “the history of women has remained invisible because it has not been narrated, recognized, or expressed; and it remains hidden under historiographic forms assumed as real”. In a similar vein, Griselda Pollock asks, “why has modernist culture been so unable imaginatively to integrate women’s creativity into its narratives of creative radicalism, innovation, dissidence, or transgression?” As a feminist, art historian and visual artist, I allow myself to join the voice of Josefina and mine, to those of Kirwood, Pollock and many other feminists who have worked emphatically to recover and exhume the histories and artistic productions of women who they are not visible because that recovery allows us to understand what our oppression has been and assume a virtual liberation.