The Archivists of Gaza

Annihilation is a process, fluctuating in speed. It drones. Bombards. Burns. Thermobaric waves of heat. And it plunders. These will be initial notes on the ongoing genocide of archivists and archives in Gaza. It is a reflection on the location of archives in the histories of Palestine and its peoples, and on the ways in which archive-making is a ground on which the very stakes of peoplehood have been fought against settler-colonial invasion. Drawing from over ten years of collaborative work with archivists in Gaza, this will be a study on what archives mean for those tasked with shaping them, and for those of us who rely on them to approach history. In thinking of these collections and their caretakers, I aim to question how and why archives remain such a crucial modality for historical reckoning, how do they disappear, and how might we consider such a reckoning without them?