The purpose of this digital database is to inventory, link and describe primary-source materials related to State violence and Nation-State formation in post-revolution Iran. It brings together disseminated documents, public and private collections across the world (visual, audio, manuscripts, digital-born and digitized). The database is designed as an active and collaborative tool, committed towards an open-access research.
It is a direct political and ethical stand against the tendency to treat archives as private properties, exclusive hunting grounds and opportunities, while overseeing (and not even mentioning) that these documents are precious because they are rare, and they are rare because their destruction and fragmentation is a direct effect of the history of violence they bear witness of.
What our database mainly provides is rigorous meta-data respecting archival standards of description, which will make the existing (online and physical) collections more easily and permanently searchable and present in the world of online data. The collections are scattered around the globe and often anchored in telling stories of archival activism. The aim of our linked, searchable data-base of collections and the meta-data we have produced for them is to enhance the archival dignity of these numerous initiative and share them with a community of knowledge and truth-building.
Counter-archives are not a way to build up the lacking empirical sources and replace missing archives. They are a site for ethnographying violence as it unfolds in disputed memory regimes and produces different political subjectivities.
Links present on the data-base may have been eventually deactivated by the time you consult them, for reasons beyond our control. We are not responsible for deletions of sources, modifications and errors that occur after we have inventoried them. Do not hesitate to signal us these problems.
While the project does not primarly intend at preserving and hosting documents, we can provide assistance and counsel for finding sustainable repositories for private archives (please contact us).