Institutions control enslaved people’s identity by controlling who narrates their images

Evidence

Just as Agassiz wanted to tell the story of who he thought they were back in 1850, Harvard continued to tell the story of who the university and select academics wanted them to be today. Neither version has anything to do with the truth. And every time Harvard tells that story—or anoints someone to do so—Renty and Delia and Jack and Drana and all the others forced to sit for those photos are stripped of their dignity, their heritage, and their legacy. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 659

Categorization

• XREF: This structural point about archival narration echoes Saidiya Hartman and other critiques of the archive as an instrument that perpetuates the power imbalance it documents.