Documentary archives structurally favor slaveholders who created the records

Evidence

I also understood how difficult it was to prove my connection. We arranged to talk on the phone, and in between I tried to read Delia’s Tears. It was the opposite experience of Rentyhorn. Rogers’s book reminded me of the article that Rich sent me: the very first pages talk about the subject matter in a very disconnected way, something to be studied. I understood that this was what academics do, but it also made me incredibly uncomfortable considering how intimate and violent these images are. Still, I was moved by the line “At the heart of this story is the question of what it means to be human.” Another line that resonated was “History favors the keepers—the slaveholders, politicians, and others who made the documents we now use to write history. And even though Delia is at the very heart of the history of these photographs, she is nowhere to be seen.” All true. And while Rogers states that “depicting Delia through the eyes of others repeats the repressive act that resulted in the photographs,” she then begins the book with an admittedly fictional account of what Delia was experiencing as she was being photographed. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 268

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own archival research and to broader historiography about who created the written record; also echoes ‘small acts of decorum toward corpses’ reading theme about violence buried in records.
• SEED: Essay angle: the paradox that an author acknowledges history favors the keepers yet still opens with a fictionalized account of Delia—the tension between reconstructing an enslaved subject and repeating the act of depicting her through others’ eyes.