| Title | On Redactions |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Fragmented Thoughts on FOIA Requests and Appeals |
| Contributor | David H. Price(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0466.1.11 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/redacted-writing-in-the-negative-space-of-the-state/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | David H. Price |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2024-10-27 |
| Long abstract | This chapter considers the political and economic settings in which Freedom of Information Act research occurs, and uses notions of “fragmentology” coming from archaeologists work with incomplete texts as a way to help us view the partially released texts that FOIA scholars work with—noting significant differences between the accidental and intentional processes that make these two types of texts incomplete. This chapter reviews the sort of logical arguments that are available to researchers appealing redacted portions of texts released under FOIA, and discusses how much efforts contemporary government censors put into keeping significant records from the past inaccessible. |
| Page range | pp. 167–173 |
| Print length | 7 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
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David H. Price is a Professor of Anthropology at St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington. He wrote a three-volume series for Duke University Press using FOIA documents and archival sources examining American anthropologists’ interactions with intelligence agencies: Threatening Anthropology (2004) examined McCarthyism’s impacts on anthropology; Anthropological Intelligence (2008) documented anthropological contributions to World War II, and his Cold War Anthropology (2016) explored Cold War interactions between anthropologists, the CIA, and Pentagon. His latest book, Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA (2024), draws on declassified CIA documents and a massive archival collection to establish how the CIA used the Asia Foundation in the 1950s and ’60s for covert political ends. He is a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.