Slippery Histories: We Will Fight Them in the Archives

“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.”

O’Brien explains to Winston in the dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell. This quote provides insight into why state servants throw certain pages into the so-called memory hole in the novel. Casually tossed, inconvenient evidence is devoured by flames and lost forever, overseen by the menacing eyes of Big Brother.

Controlling matter – or material – is the means for historical revisionism. Orwell framed his dystopian visions within his famous novel, but at the time of writing – and as argued by Anthony Burgess – these were clearly contemporary concerns, and not some distant imaginary. Soviet threats loomed large in the post-war climate of 1940s Britain. Meanwhile, abstract artists produced nauseating visions of obliterated wasteland. Imminent nuclear threats and the scars of war bore desolate landscapes where all traces of human life and its histories had vanished, such as the reliefs of William Turnbull.

Struggles for historical posterity occur in the archives. Inconvenient “truths” can be slipped under the carpet, exiled into the smoky land of oral memory. This is why archivists undergo professional training and develop an assiduous eye, because they will provide the fodder for future historians who weave narratives of governments’ pasts.

Historians are helplessly subjective, despite claims to the contrary. Thucydides (c.460-400 BC), widely cited as the first scientific historian, summarises the motivation behind his methodology in The History of the Peloponnesian War: “In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.” Consulting various eyewitnesses and critically examining his own interpretation, in light of pain-staking evidence, are the methods outlined by Thucydides to counter Romantic or exaggerated narratives of history.

These lofty scientific aspirations outlined by Thucydides are utopian, leading us to doubt the veracity of his assertion that “the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on”. Truth-claims, such as this one, should trigger alarm bells. Socrates famously recognised that true wisdom lies in realising one’s own ignorance, and the same is true for historians. The more candid historian in this context would be motivated by the sentiment of Albert Camus, in his admittance that “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

Thus, historians already tread on unstable ground due the subjectivity of historical narrative. The manipulation of archives contributes another level of boobytrap – one that could make governments fall and regimes shatter. Allegations that Trump willingly retained classified documents after he left office and then deleted surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago capturing this transference, thereby comprise ammunition for politically-motivated individuals.

These charges were first made in June 2023. Throughout, Trump has maintained his innocence and argued that the lead prosecutor, special counsel Jack Smith, was politically motivated. Reflecting on the case in November last year, Trump wrote on X: “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.” Smith withdrew the case in November 2024 by citing the Justice Department policy that prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president. Yet, the incident has highlighted the clout that archivists can have in political cases. Long-gone is the innocent image of a bespectacled fuzzy-jumper who locks themselves deep away in the archives. Paper trails have real-world impact.

How has this change come to fruition?

Postmodern approaches argue that certain marginalised groups are silenced in the archives through both conscious and unconscious processes of selection. With regard to colonial archives, anthropologist Ann Stoler argues that archives “are products of state machines, it is less obvious that they are, in their own right, technologies that bolstered the production of those states themselves”. Articles have arisen with titles such as “Without a Trace: Sexuality and the Colonial Archive” in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, along with books such as The Silence of the Archive.

Historians have for many years studied biases in the archives. Neglect of evidence is even touched upon by Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian War. He laments, “So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.” What is new is muddying professionalism with identity-driven drives for power – a lens for political convenient truths, in the name of justice. Or, as Thucydides suggests, the motivation to spin a captivating story.

Archival mechanisms are presented as the battlegrounds of power. It is no surprise, therefore, that Democrats turned to the archives as part of their political machinery.

Recently, in an interview on 6 January 2025, Trump expressed his plans to replace the current head of the National Archives and Record Administration, Colleen Shogan. In response to Hugh Hewitt’s statement referring to the allegations – “I just want a new Archivist so we don’t have to do this again when you leave office again.” – Trump affirms, “Well, I think I can tell you that we will get somebody, yes, I’ll have, let me just put it, yeah, we will have a new Archivist.”

Trump has the power to dismiss and appoint the Archivist. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 stipulates, “The Archivist shall be appointed without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of the professional qualifications required to perform the duties and responsibilities of the office of Archivist.” In this statement, professionalism and objectivity are pitted against political affiliation.

Luckily, the institutional clauses remain in this Presidential Records Act. We should admit, as humans, that we are biased, but this does not prevent an aspiration towards integrity and truth-telling. The recent attempts to mobilise archives as political weapons reflects the current postmodern theories that seek to deconstruct in order to refashion history according to convenient narratives. Time will tell whether Trump actually replaces Shogan, whose period in office began after the first allegations. For now, Trump has signalled his acknowledgement of the significance of cultural institutions as a target for opposition. Adherence to professional standards – without political bias – should be an ideal that he aspires towards, and one that Smith pulled out from under his own carpet.