What is a counter-archive?

“Counter-archiving is more than a process of diversifying conventional archives. This means it is not simply about adding previously erased or hidden histories to an archive, but a method of interrogating the logic of archives. As Syrus Marcus Ware (2017) notes, counter-archiving is a practice of interrupting the whiteness of archives”

This module will teach you where to seek archival culinary ephemera— or otherwise, how you can further develop your own collection through opening up to collaboration through participatory donations or submissions through family, friends, peers, and even strangers!

While we know that archives can be used as pedagogical tools for multisensory and interdisciplinary learning, the documents’ visual designs and descriptive language of food propaganda are not the only methods that we can use to examine ideas surrounding social and economic dimensions of food.

Preserved records and books may be limited to culinary topics from the Western canon, such as World War II food rationing recipes or corporate histories (ie. Kelloggs, H.J. Heinz to name a few)— in fact, anything related to the dominant colonial past makes up the majority of archives within the Global North.

“Ann Stoler’s Colonial archives and the arts of governance (2002) points out how scholars studying archives often ask questions regarding the dominant socio-political forces and moral virtues that produce qualified knowledges which disqualify, marginalize, and erase other knowledges and ways of knowing”

So how do we begin to centre and build on racialized identities who have developed a culinary presence on colonized lands? Through connecting with our own people.