Socioplastics 11836 Disclosure with Unequal Duties
Institutions must explain decisions that shape public life, while people may need to protect identities, memories and relationships. OpaqueLegitimacy [9019] names this unequal distribution of disclosure duties. It offers a public standard for archives: make institutional choices open to challenge while allowing contributors to govern the circulation of sensitive knowledge. Ann Laura Stoler reads colonial archives as instruments and records of governance, shaped by routines, classifications and silences. Ariella Aïsha Azoulay examines how archival access can carry forward imperial relations of acquisition and interpretation. Édouard Glissant’s defence of opacity protects a person’s capacity to remain partially unknowable. Together, they distinguish institutional accountability from demands that participants expose every aspect of their lives. A city museum documenting a displaced neighbourhood might receive oral histories under different consent terms. Some contributors permit attribution; others allow research use or request that names and precise locations remain private. The museum can publish its selection criteria, provenance policy, consent process and routes for correction or withdrawal. Visitors can assess institutional practice while contributors retain control over the permissions they granted. A dual disclosure register would record what the institution must explain about decisions, custody and selection, alongside protections required for people and sensitive materials. Each restriction would name its basis, responsible authority and review condition. This structure makes privacy and confidentiality specific, so public scrutiny can focus on decisions while personal exposure remains governed by consent and risk. Review should involve contributors and a named institutional authority, with a practical route for correcting records as consent and circumstances evolve.
REFERENCES
Azoulay, A.A. (2019) Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso.
Glissant, É. (1997) Poetics of Relation. Translated by B. Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Stoler, A.L. (2009) Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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