Susi K Frank’s new essay “Natural Archives as Counter Archives: Gulag Literature from Witness to Postmemory” brings a view to how natural archives fit into existing archival theory, encouraging readers to see them as subversive inversions of the powers that shape the archives historians are accustomed to using. The author also analyzes how permafrost is represented in two works of fiction by Varlam Šalamov and Sergei Lebedev, showing how it preserves information about the experience of the gulag that the state wished to be forgotten. In this way, natural archives not only preserve information that traditional archives eschew, but also information that undermines dominant power structures.
Climate History Network