Diverse worlds and the collective archive at the University of Melbourne

In August 2016, a piece of graffiti appeared on the wall of the University of Melbourne Archives repository saying ‘Selected Archive Lies’. That it appeared on the day after I had talked to a large class of third-year history students seemed more than coincidental. After reading Michelle Caswell’s observation that historical scholars rarely understand the intellectual work of archivists, I had talked to the students on the themes of their course, weaving in archival ideas and mentioning appraisal and selection.1 Although I finished by explaining how to find material in our catalogue, it seems the idea of selection struck more of a chord and, I assume, resulted in the graffiti – much to the amusement of my colleagues. Nevertheless, I understand where the shaky graffiti protester was coming from. In recent strands of historical and archival discourse influenced by postmodernism, archives stand for the place where the powerful subvert the cultural narrative to exclude the powerless: the place where what is selected – lies. In Alana Kumbier’s book on queering the archive she says: