There are many and no-doubt ever developing discursive risks in this archive project--
-- As in all projects focused on vulnerable communities, especially those designed to draw out sources and cascading effects of harm, there is a risk of overshadowing community strengths and potentials.
-- Given escalating public and government attention to environmental injustice, there is a growing risk of rhetorical and conceptual lock-in -- that this project and archive needs to creatively and proactively work against.
This archive is intended to expose its own discursive risks… which is a carrot on a stick. That is, though it will also inevitably reproduce them (there is always an outside to thought), the archive is intended to encourage a practice of looping attention back onto its own “unthought” aspects. It is intended to put these discursive risks to work! To use them to as opportunities for recognizing the way our categories of thought, speech, and experience continue to reflect the stratification and sedimentation of power relations.
In seeking to continually pull the rug from under one’s feet, one discursive risk could be paralysis… of oneself or of others. Which means care must be taken not to deterritorialize too much, too deeply, too quickly. Care and strategy are paramount.