This is the text of a presentation I delivered as part of the History Australia roundtable discussion ‘Historians and the Archive: sacralization, democratisation, limits, and liberties,’ at the 2022 Australian Historical Association Conference (Deakin University, Geelong).

Nearly five years ago, in September 2017, I attended Tom Griffiths’ Ernest Scott lecture at the University of Melbourne. It was an engaging, intellectual exploration of the craft of history and its role in the world. But there was a moment that gave me pause.

I try to evoke the embodied experience of research, whether it’s paying attention to Country, listening to locals, pulling on a strong pair of boots, or undergoing the rituals and protocols of archival access where the reverent quiet of the room, the whispered request for the librarian and the donning of white gloves are all purifying preparations for silent communion with fragile paper, where the magic begins.

Tom griffiths

This description of archival access troubled me. The shift from active engagement—paying attention; listening; pulling on boots—to ‘undergoing rituals and protocols’ struck me as curiously out of place, though also I knew I had seen this sort of language in other historians’ work too. ‘There’s an article in there somewhere,’ I thought.

Cut to early 2020, and the ANU’s School of History where I was teaching an Honours and Masters course in Advanced Historiography with my colleague Ben Silverstein. The first reading for the class was the chapter ‘Crying in the Archives,’ from Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath’s How to Write History that People Want to Read. It opened with an epigraph.

Historians immerse themselves in context; they give themselves wholly and sensually to the mysterious, alchemical power of archives.

It was Tom Griffiths again, from his renowned book Slicing the Silence. The same suggestion the archives were a mysterious space to which the historian must ‘submit.’ Why had Curthoys and McGrath chosen that, I wondered; and what were we telling our students by incorporating language like this into our courses?

I also thought: ‘It’s really time I wrote that article.’

The result is ‘The temple of history: historians and the sacralisation of archival work,’ published by History Australia in December 2021. Though the article includes examples drawn from Griffiths’ work the intention was not to focus on him. These moments were a catalyst for me to look at the tendency to sacralise archives and archival research more broadly, and to consider some of the potential implications of this recurring trope.

Despite the long hours many historians spend in the archives, most write very little about what they actually do there. As archivists like Brien Brothman and Terry Cook have pointed out, discussion of this aspect of historical research is often relegated to brief descriptions in introductions, prefaces, postscripts, and footnotes. Archival research has been characterised variously as the work of ransackers, grubbers, detectives, and addicts, searching for scientific truths, nuggets of certainty, masculine mastery, or the feverish pleasure of an archival ‘hit’.

The persistent use of religious metaphors for the historical research process does something more, perpetuating a disciplinary claim over the physical spaces and intellectual interpretation of documentary archives. The archive here is characterised both as a seat of authority, and as a rarefied, sacred space where only the initiated can reveal truths about the past.

There are numerous examples, starting in the nineteenth century, of historians revelling in sepulchral or cloistered archival spaces; of archives and libraries like temples, shrines, and cathedrals; of bookshelves like altars, and research rooms like inner sanctums. Archival research becomes a ‘coming-of-age ritual,’ the process of archival access like a purifying preparation, and historians the initiated. Archival records are ‘relics’ or ‘manna’; our encounters with them are described as ‘spiritual’ or presented as a form of communion. As for the work of history, it is a resurrectionary force, the historian breathing life into dead scraps, bringing the past back and making it speak again. It is the historian’s calling—presented by some as a sacred, almost spiritual quest.

Often these moments are relatively short, and singly it could be argued they don’t do much harm. I’m also not suggesting they are more broadly characteristic of the attitudes or beliefs of the historians and other writers in whose work they appear. (In Griffith’s case in particular they stand out to me in large part because they seem so uncharacteristic of his broader work and interests.) But, with comparatively little still written by historians about the labour and specifics of archival research, cumulatively the message being conveyed here is, I think, problematic in a number of ways.

First, there are many examples where these descriptions obscure the significance of archival work. Archivists are not just attendants or record guardians; the sliver of the documentary record that gets preserved is shaped by archival legislation, appraisal processes, retention and disposal policies, arrangement and description practices and more. Far from being blank or dead until the historian arrives, the meaning and context of archival records continues to develop, accumulate, and change through these processes, and as they are accessed by different communities of users.

When viewed cumulatively these recurring descriptions also produce a sense that long periods of immersive work in physical archives is revered over and above other historical methods: oral history work, engaging with landscape and community knowledge, digital techniques, deep history work, cross-disciplinary collaborations and so on. None of these are described in such rarefied terms. This can have problematic consequences for parts of the discipline, and places pressure on students and precariously employed academics in particular.

There is research showing students are often unsure about archival work, not just because of the often-imposing spaces and protocols they need to navigate to gain access, but also because they don’t understand what the work actually is or how they should go about it. Rather than rites of passage, initiation, or attempts to instill a sense of reverent awe, historians and other archives users should seek to help students and others understand how we do the work of history, and how they can become actively involved in that work too.

And there are many, many users of archives for whom these are already deeply problematic, daunting, or traumatising spaces. First Nations people. Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants. Refugees. Queer communities. Historians can help to demystify these spaces and, as frequent users of archives, help to explain—or better yet, help to change—the protocols and practices that foster feelings of reverence in some, while generating at best confusion in many others.

The alternative is that those who have not been ‘initiated’ will continue to feel excluded and marginalised, and the legitimacy and authority of this aspect of the history discipline will remain shrouded in mystery. Given the many challenges that continue to impact humanities research, this is a situation that benefits no one.

Full article: ‘The Temple of History: Historians and the Sacralisation of Archival Work,’ History Australia 18 (4): 676–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2021.1988650.