Caswell, Michelle, and Marika Cifor. “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives.” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23–43.
Caswell and Cifor propose a pivot from the rights-based framework used to discuss social justice in archives in favor of a method based in a feminist ethics of care—in particular, based on the practice of radical empathy. A feminist ethics of care shifts toward a reparative and restorative approach that has been elided in rights-based frameworks; it leans on ideas of community and mutual obligation rather than individualism, and it recognizes that injustice is intersectional, is macro and micro, and pervades the public and private. As such, it provides a natural pathway to a more affective and empathetic approach to the work of archives. Empathy can interconnect archivists and materials and bridge the archive and the community, inviting archivists and institutions to partner with the creators of and the communities represented in materials.