Some Thoughts about Altering Historical Documents, Governmentality, & the US National Archives (and Michel Foucault)

When curators from the National Archives of the United States altered a photo by Mario Tama from the 2017 Women's March, they probably did not expect the blowback that they received.

The original image showed a crowd of thousands protesting in front of the US Capitol with signs that included "GOD HATES TRUMP" and "If my VAGINA could shoot BULLETS It'd be less REGULATED." On 17 January 2020, a report by Joe Heim from the Washington Post revealed that curators had doctored the photo, blurring signs critical of Trump. The sign "GOD HATES TRUMP" became "GOD HATES ****."

On top of this, the curators decided to blur words that referred to women's anatomy. "If my VAGINA could shoot BULLETS It'd be less REGULATED" became "If my ****** could shoot BULLETS It'd be less REGULATED."

The National Archives initially responded to the Washington Post with the following explanation: “As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy." Blurring anatomical references was an attempt, they claimed, to protect the public from reading words that they might consider offensive.

The public response was swift. Academics, museum professionals, scholarly organizations, and members of the public condemned the action. The National Archives was "Orwellian" or "Stalinist." The curators at the National Archives had abandoned their role as protectors of the public record and had sanitized history in the service of political ideology.

It didn't take long for the National Archives to respond. Their mea culpa came in a short note summed up in its opening line, "We made a mistake."

For many readers, this was enough. The National Archives had done what few DC institutions have done of late. They admitted their mistake and planned to rectify it.

For others, this was not enough. The National Archives had made a fundamental error of judgment, and in presenting an alternative version of history, they had silenced the women who participated in the march. They had broken the public trust.

Still for others, the fact that the National Archives attempted to soften their actions by claiming in their apology that the images were only a promotional display in the elevator lobby left a sour taste--especially because photos of the exhibit showed that the image was is in fact the exhibition entrance display, with its own museum label.

While there is certainly plenty to learn from this exhibition, which will no doubt become a case study in future museum studies textbooks, what is particularly interesting to me are the conditions that made the actions by the National Archives possible. Transforming a historical image for an exhibition is a conscious choice--one that requires discussion and agreement among multiple actors. This is especially the case with an institution such as the National Archives with its stated mission to protect and preserve the historical record of the United States.

I think that what we are seeing here is a prime example of what Michel Foucault referred to as "governmentality."

At its simplest, Foucault's concept of governmentality refers to the ways in which "rationality" (i.e. ways of reasoning) can function to regulate how people act and think. Responding to their social, economic, and political contexts, individuals internalize limits to their actions and circumscribe fields of possibility. They conform to dominant ways of seeing, thinking, and doing. In effect, they are coerced into acting within proscribed limits and become actors in reinforcing the status quo.

In the current political context--one in which elected leaders reject facts and then reimagine the historical record to present alternative realities; one in which these leaders attempt to undermine public confidence and trust in their institutions; one in which politicians summarily dismiss expertise and nuanced knowledge if it does't match their current whims--otherwise well-meaning individuals might be co-opted into reproducing these techniques of governance.

In this instance, the employees at the National Archives have internalized a set of limits. The curators decided that certain forms of political speech--those that criticized a sitting president and invoked the female body to demonstrate attacks on women's rights--were too controversial and might bring undo attention from the current administration.

In effect, the National Archives followed an unwritten, unspoken directive of the state. And, in so doing, they mirrored the politics of the state by presenting an alternative history, undermined public confidence in a governmental institution (in this case, the National Archives itself), and dismissed professional standards to appease the political winds.

This is what Foucault was talking about when he examined the interface between institutions, knowledge, and power. He recognized that power in modern society isn't simply about top-down control. It is about distributed networks of power, embodied in institutional rationalities and self-governing subjects coerced by both responding to and perpetuating these rationalities.