Digital Archives as Relationship-Building: Reflections on Worldmaking in Community-Based Latin American and Caribbean Diasporic Memory Work in Southern California

Author

Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz, Claremont Graduate UniversityFollow

Date of Award

Fall 2022

Degree Type

Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation

Degree Name

Cultural Studies, PhD

Program

School of Arts and Humanities

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Eve Oishi

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

David-Luis Brown

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

JoAnna Poblete

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Angela Aguayo

Terms of Use & License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Rights Information

© 2022 Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz

Keywords

Caribbean, community, diaspora, digital archives, Latin American, relationality

Abstract

While participatory digital methods for conducting archival research and practice have contributed in meaningful ways to discourses on rebalancing power asymmetries in archival partnerships between academics and communities, this work has yet to effectively disrupt the status quo. Using a transdisciplinary approach I reflect on my first-hand experiences working in partnership with U.S. Latin American and Caribbean diasporic groups on personal digital memory projects as an active member and founder of ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM) Memory Collective and draw on women of color feminism, Indigenous perspectives, and anti-colonial/decolonial theories that reflect the embodiment of memory to offer an alternative methodological tool for regenerating community-academic archival partnerships. Building on these various bodies of knowledge, my dissertation demonstrates how a digital archives praxis rooted in relationality can help transform structural power dynamics in the archive. Most powerfully, it opens up space to imagine and enact alternative ways of being together that allow for collective liberation. While academic-community partnerships will always remain entangled in issues of power, authority, and control, there are possibilities to further equity and justice through a digital archives praxis of relationality.

ISBN

9798368461755

Recommended Citation

Hicks-Alcaraz, Marisa. (2022). Digital Archives as Relationship-Building: Reflections on Worldmaking in Community-Based Latin American and Caribbean Diasporic Memory Work in Southern California. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 448. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/448.