Archival Outliers, Invented Ephemerals in Constructing Environmental Histories

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This is the introductory post to the Archival Outliers, Invented Ephemerals in Constructing Environmental Histories series edited by Nuala Proinnseas Caomhánach.

Crumpled pieces of oxidized newspaper from the 1920s held the desiccant remains and ghostly imprint of an unnamed flower.

A crumpled piece of paper reveals the imprint of an unnamed flower. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (France), Collection: Vascular plants (P). (Image by Author.)

A post-it note with blue penned cursive stating “file lunatics”adhered to a pamphlet by Brenning James. 

“A Speculation Concerning The Chemical Basis of Life” by Brenning James labelled with a post-it note to a secretary to filed it under “Lunatics.” James Watson Collection, Cold Spring Harbour Library and Archives. (Image by author)

An unannotated, undated photograph of an unnamed Malagasy man holding a Nile crocodile–is it dead? Is it alive? Is it taxidermied? So many questions appear from a single archival photograph.

An unannotated, undated photograph of an unnamed Malagasy man holding a Nile crocodile. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (France). (Image by Author.)

In a 1972 letter to a fellow plant scientist, a final comment after a long discussion of taxonomic names, about his colleagues’ love of Maidenform models. The moment when an interviewee pauses, and you sense what’s coming is a request to not quote or mention that statement about that institute or person.  

This series emerged from the curiosity to explore how environmental historians engage with a range of source material—–from institutional reports, oral histories, environmental laboratory equipment, to personal correspondence. Annotations, random scribbles on the back of receipts, conference menus, postcards, and untitled photographs are analyzed for their use within the histories we seek to write. Once considered as not relevant or useful for a particular project of interest they are either ignored as we move on through the file, discarded in a post-archival photographic sorting, or are placed within our own ever-growing archival outlier folders. An invented ephemeral file or folder that contains a hodgepodge of material that becomes a “just in case” collection, an outlier collection of outliers. 

This nascent archival collection of our archival collection of interest sits there, on a shelf, camera roll, or electronically stored folder. A haunting, like a turn of the screw or perhaps a lockbox of never-to-be seen unruly histories. As environmental historians, what do we do with material that resists project placement and narrative formation? Small pieces of a story that cannot fit within the project? How do we cure an archival hangover that holds on to the hope that perhaps one day they could fit in a future project? Perhaps even a project could be made of this one ephemeral clue. 

By considering archival outliers and invented ephemerals as a critical register for the field of environmental history, this series argues for their potential to offer narratives that highlight the challenges of writing histories where editorial choices need to be made. If parts of a narrative cannot fit in the broader claims or arguments, does the narrative foundation still stand?

The authors of this series explore the category of archival outlier and invented ephemerals as a means to interrogate how historians engage with archives, in theory and in method, and the writing of history.

Feature Image: A crumpled piece of paper reveals the imprint of an unnamed flower. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (France), Collection: Vascular plants (P). (Image by Author.)
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Nuala Caomhanach

Nuala Proinnseas Caomhánach is an Assistant Professor in the International History and Politics Department of the Geneva Graduate Institute and a research scientist in the Invertebrate Department at the American Museum of Natural History. She teaches and researches at the intersection of environmental history, history of science, law, and the climate crisis.

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