Towards a non-discriminatory, inclusive use of language and images in our journal

Early popular visual culture, by its very definition, stems from a period in which different standards and norms were dominating public opinion – and some of this historical material is discriminatory. People from a great range of identities, whether due to gender, religion, ethnicity, race, sexuality, disability or class are presented in derogatory ways – both in word and image. Committed to overcoming discrimination and to making academic research a more inclusive space, we editors find it important to discuss with our readers, writers and reviewers how to deal with historical forms of discrimination without repeating and thereby perpetuating those forms. We are not intending to be exhaustive nor definitive about the breadth of inclusivity under consideration. The suggestions made in this document are neither prescriptive nor concrete guidelines. This editorial is authored by the editorial team and was written up by Sarah Dellmann after discussion with Joe Kember and Andrew Shail. It should be considered a beginning rather than conclusion of our engagement with these issues.

Although the primary aim of this editorial is to discuss and develop a publication strategy for our journal, we decided to also include reflections on the use and presentation of images from the perspectives of archives, online resources and lecturing. This is for two reasons: firstly, most of our authors, readers and reviewers are engaged in teaching and/or use or contribute to online-accessible databases of historical material; and secondly, we consider that strategies and reflections from the fields of teaching and documentation can inform our debate on publication in a productive manner.

This initiative had the general support of all board members and we are thankful for all advice and suggestions we received. The broad interest in this debate showed us that there is a need as well as expertise and interest to continue this discussion. We will create a ‘living document’ based on this editorial, which we invite you all, editors, authors and readers, to develop further. All resources quoted can be found at the end.

The aim of EPVC is to encourage, enable and advance inclusive academic debate and the editorial staff of EPVC feels a responsibility to intervene and advise where they can to increase the inclusivity of the debates taking place in its pages. This commitment to inclusivity involves the following strategies by EPVC editorial staff:

(1)	a refusal to publish material which deliberately excludes participants from academic debate by offending, insulting or downgrading them;
(2)	a dedication to helping authors avoid all offensive and discriminatory language and attitudes, which would have the unintended result of excluding participants from the debate;
(3)	the exercise of an advisory role to help authors reproduce historical material that was originally designed to exclude by offence, insult and degradation, without perpetuating those characteristics in nowadays’ academic debate.

The editorial staff of EPVC reiterates that they regard inclusivity as vital to freedom of speech, and as essential in academic debate. As a result they do not regard these strategies as in any way reducing that freedom, or limiting that debate. We accept that, where it is important to academic debate, readers of EPVC may still find themselves offended by things that everyone should find offensive. But we will work to ensure that such material is published only to advance, and not to restrict, free academic discussion and debate.

Our editorial staff and our reviewers have asked and will continue to ask authors to revise their articles when we consider use of language to be inappropriate. We treat manuscripts based on the assumption that no author wishes to perpetuate racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory and stereotypical ideas. We regard all contributors, including ourselves, as likely to be learning in the process of undoing discrimination in our practice as historiographers.

We are aware that the discussion on inclusive or non-discriminatory use of language varies in the countries that we mainly reach¹: we work not only in different academic and disciplinary traditions but also in different countries. We recognize that many authors submitting articles to EPVC work in second or even third or fourth language and there are subtle differences even among the Anglophone countries. Today’s nation states have different histories with respect to colonialism and migration, with varied ethnic populations and religious communities and different traditions of embracing (or not) multicultural society, as well as variation in the level of acceptance for (contested) gender and racial expressions. Every country has its own history of discrimination. We think it impossible to compile an international ‘one-solution-fits-all’ check-list for authors and reviewers with ‘the right terms to use’. What is possible, though, is to increase awareness about how we as scholars (re)present groups of people and to be even more conscious about the use of word and image in our professional practice. We request that our contributors research the terms best suited for the presentation of their work and consult available resources to that end.

Guidelines of publishers

Taking the perspective of a publisher, I decided to investigate strategies of publishing houses and guidelines designed for public communication of an academic institution rather than theoretical scholarship or writers concerned about social justice (not that these are mutually exclusive areas) because I was interested in how institutions actually implement the suggestions. I therefore, briefly surveyed general guidelines published on the websites of major academic publishing houses but did not systematically look into the guidelines of individual journals and their editorial boards. Some journals do specify the use of non-discriminatory language. For example, the journal Centaurus. An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects (2017), states in its author guidelines: ‘For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used’. My impression is that relevant guidelines do not get more explicit than this, so we editors saw the need for a discussion about ethical treatment of historical material with offensive content.

Our own publishing house, Taylor and Francis, specifies in the ‘Ethical Guidelines for Authors’ that ‘Authors must avoid making defamatory statements in submitted articles which could be construed as impugning any person’s reputation’ which seems to refer rather to libel than to discrimination. An earlier version published on the web page ‘Writing your article: guidance notes’ was more explicit: ‘For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used’. However, in none of these cases is detailed information given on what this entails. We wish to acknowledge, though, that our editors at Taylor and Francis offered to advise us in a situation of conflict.

The general author’s guidelines from Springer and Elsevier seem not to explicitly require non-discriminatory language at all. Wiley has published a detailed brochure, Wiley’s Best Practices Guidelines on Publishing Ethics (2014) which, concerning use of language, gets no more specific than ‘Not [to] use insulting, hostile, or defamatory language’ (2014, 10). Still, it includes suggestions for the treatment of some kinds of visual material: ‘[e]ditors should consider any sensitivities when publishing images of objects that might have cultural significance or cause offence (for example, religious texts or historical events)’ (2014, 6) and specifically, refers to images of human remains. This guideline also has the merit of listing available resources. Still, no statement about images with discriminatory or offensive content is made. An answer I received from several colleagues working in boards of other journals that publish historical and/or visual material confirmed my impression that there was discussion on how to present such images, but that these discussions were never published.

Guidelines of archives

Published suggestions and strategy papers on how to deal with visual and/or historical material are also scarce in the world of archives and museums. My inquiry via the mailing lists of the International Council of Museums Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) also underlined the impression that such policies or strategical papers are not commonly established. It seems that museum staff do not often publish about the ways in which exhibitions were curated and on which grounds decisions were made, even though they are often the outcome of thorough reflection and debate and also inform educational and outreach activities.

An inspiring case that explicitly states an institution’s strategy is the document ‘Ethical Guidelines’ established by RomArchive – The Digital Archive of the Roma (2017): ‘Stereotypical or otherwise offensive representations of Roma may only be presented in the archive with contextualization or deconstruction of the content, in order to avoid additional harm or violation. This applies equally to art produced by Roma themselves’. RomArchive decided to collect all material related to their community but to not publish online offensive materials held in their collection. A blog post by Keiper (2017) on the same website presents the discussion of a workshop that addressed collection building, acquisition strategies, archival practices and publication practices of archives and museums. This post includes short video interviews (subtitled in English) with curators and archivists of the Documentation Centre of the German Sinti and Roma, the head of the German Federal Archives and Schwules Museum* Berlin that reveal the different strategies chosen.

Another example of published material is the recommendation established at the 2013 seminar ‘Heritage Practice in Contested Spaces’, dealing with heritage and commemoration in post-Troubles Northern Ireland. Some of these suggestions and criteria – e.g. ask all involved groups what they consider problematic emblems and establish a consensus with all about their display (or not) in public space and public institutions – could be easily adapted to other projects.²

While the subject of non-discriminatory language and treatment of offensive images seemingly has not been treated widely and explicitly in editorial boards or museum directives boards, this has happened in other areas. An impressive body of scholarly work on various aspects of non-discriminatory language exists in the fields of linguistics, social psychology, Black Feminism and Intersectionality Studies. Public institutions and universities’ human resources departments have implemented policies for non-discriminatory language use and guidelines for showing diversity in illustrations, mostly with respect to marketing of the university and on-campus communication. Even if not explicitly designed for historical research, many of the concerns addressed in those policy papers prove useful for tackling historical material, and some may even be applied to visual material. In what follows, we present some examples that we consider to be particularly relevant to our field of study.

Resources and strategies for non-discriminatory, inclusive language

Language is not neutral, it is a political tool; the words we choose and the semantic fields they stem from position our research object and ourselves in a wider discourse. In the study of material from a period in which discrimination along the lines of ethnicity/‘race’/race,³ sex, sexual orientation and religion was legal, and in which a common colonial practice was to hierarchise the peoples of the world – much of these thoughts informed today’s knowledge – we cannot overlook discriminatory expressions, dismissive undertones and patronising assumptions when we encounter them in the historical material that we study.

Equally, we believe that finding refuge in arguments such as ‘… but that is how the source put it’ and use ‘just describing what was there’ deflects the labour necessary for dealing with the discriminatory elements in history – even if those aspects are not the main point in the article’s argument. From the viewpoint of historians of culture, it may seem that every source, when reproduced in part or in whole in a publication, appears clearly encircled and conscribed by a halo made up of our neutrality with regard to all claims made in it, an implicit ‘holding at arm’s length’ of all discriminatory ideologies, no matter how dehumanising. However, not only is this halo, in practice, perceived by only some of our population of readers, specialist and non-specialist alike, we also give these discriminatory ideologies opportunities to reproduce, however small, when we use (or, in the case of images, reproduce) expressions of them without specific comment. Authors can use several strategies to explicitly distance themselves from ideas expressed in historical sources which they do not share. Some well-known and often applied strategies are putting discriminatory terms in scare quotes, applying the qualifier ‘so-called’ or ‘in the author’s view/terms’, ‘according to the publisher’ and similar expressions. Derogatory terms from historical sources such as ‘civilising’, ‘primitive’ or ‘half-caste’ should always be put in scare quotes and not used as terms in the author’s analysis.

For passages in articles that are not direct or indirect quotes or reconstructions, and in cases in which using the historical term is not part of the argument, the use of non-discriminatory terms provides a better option than the use of scare quotes. Several universities, especially in the US, in Canada, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and the UK, have produced such policy papers and guidelines (see resources at the end of this editorial). These papers provide helpful resources for an ‘alternative vocabulary’, especially with respect to Aboriginal Peoples and gender stereotyping. Queen’s University’s ‘Style Guide’ (2017) provides a detailed explanation of what different Canadian Aboriginal Peoples should be named and gives explanations for these expressions; the resource provided by HR department of the University of Western Australia (2017) does the same for Australian Aboriginal Peoples. The last two also provide solutions for avoiding gender bias. The Tasmanian Department of Education (2012) issued a comprehensive guideline for inclusive language, stressing the points to which educators need to pay attention and offering suggestions on how to improve inclusiveness of language.

Not all guidelines offer the same solutions. We suggest taking them as examples; authors still have to decide which phrasing is adequate in their case. All guidelines insist that the best way is to use the language preferred by marginalised communities to describe themselves, though we advise caution in this arena, too: groups with historical privileges may take offence at terms that do not reinforce that sense of entitlement to privilege, and individual members of any group may not consider certain terms as insulting. We advise to accept self-description in the presentation of an individual person but to use commonly accepted terms if you refer to a group identity (e.g. just because an individual woman does not take offence with being addressed as ‘babe’ it does not follow that this is a legitimate expression to describe women as a group). A complaint sometimes raised about non-discriminatory and inclusive language is that expressions become more complicated. We do not share this concern as we believe that thinking about the right terminology to use will result in a more precise use of terms and thus clearer analysis.

In some submissions to EPVC we see that authors make an attempt to circumvent discriminatory terms but in spite of the intentions, the chosen solutions can still be dismissive. Terms such as ‘coloured’, ‘non-white’, ‘non-European’ or ‘non-western’ are problematic because they define ethnicity from a white, European or western perspective. Depending on the context and group in question, alternatives can be, ‘Eastern’, ‘Asian’, ‘Afro-Caribbean’ or ‘Chinese-American’. The expressions ‘People of Colour’, ‘Black’, ‘Black people’, ‘Black British’ are widely accepted, and despite some contestations, still considered the best compromise.⁴ The terms ‘Black’ and ‘of Colour’ should be spelled with an upper case letter because the capitalisation expresses the socio-political construction of that category. ‘Black’ and ‘of Colour’ are thus distinguished from mere descriptive adjectives, which would be the case when using the terms with lower case letters. The term ‘extra-European’ occasionally is used to circumvent the term ‘non-European’ because the ‘non-’ refers to a lack and implies reference to a norm, whereas ‘extra-’ is a reference to geographical space and hence, more descriptive and less normative. Still, it puts Europe at the centre, so we advise to look for more adequate rephrasing if this connotation is not part of the argument or the historical situation (‘outside of Europe’ might be an option, or a positive naming of the group in question).

We suggest to avoid the term ‘Latin America’ and/or ‘Latin American’, as many Indigenous People do not regard themselves as ‘Latin’. In place, employ the terms ‘Central America’/‘Central American’ or ‘South America’/‘South American’. Mexico, for example, has more than 50 Indigenous languages which often form a relevant aspect of the identity of a community. In Guatemala, Indigenous People may be characterised as Mayan (K’iché, Mam, Kaqchiquel Mayan language communities, etc.) with approximately 20 different Maya languages are spoken in the country. In order to be precise about the language and respectful to the communities, we advise to research which term is most suitable and specific.⁵

As explained in the leaflet ‘Non-discriminatory language. A guide for students and staff’, issued by HR and Staff Development of Brunel University (2007), the word ‘ethnic’ used alone to describe someone’s origin is meaningless, as everyone belongs to an ethnic group – either to a majority or to a minority ethnic group. When writing about early popular visual culture in colonised countries, consult with scholars working in the field about which naming is considered most appropriate. There is, for example, a difference between ‘the Dutch East-Indies’ and ‘Colonial Indonesia’: ‘the Dutch East Indies’ is the historical term used by the Dutch colonisers whereas some contemporary scholars prefer ‘Colonial Indonesia’ to mark the country as Indonesian, rather than Dutch. Likewise, ‘Boxer Rebellion’ and ‘Boxer Uprising’ each frame the action of the Boxers against the colonial intruders from alternative perspectives.

Concerning disability and chronic illness, all policy papers advise to ‘put the person first’ in order to emphasise the person instead of their health status. The reasoning is that people with a disability are often referred to collectively as ‘the disabled’ or ‘the handicapped’, which is considered disrespectful because such terms would equate the entire person with the disability or (mental) illness. On the other hand, some disabled activists prefer the ‘identify first’ option to stress that disability is nothing to be ashamed of and that disability expresses a cultural and lived identity (Ladau 2015). Medical diagnosis and mobility equipment should not be used in the ‘identity first’ option. As editors, we thus ask our readers to check with the persons in question how they identify and find a solution respectful to the language they use.⁶

The historical period covered by the scope of our journal is also marked by patriarchy and sexism and we ask our readers to avoid bias on the basis of gender and sexuality. Gender-sensitive adaptations are included in all above cited guidelines, and the ‘General Guidelines for Reducing Bias’ by the American Psychological Association (2017a, 2017b) specifies terminology for gender expressions, sexual behaviour and identities. The brochure ‘Watch your language’ (University of Melbourne 2005) offers many solutions for gender-neutral terms to replace biased ones, e.g. ‘manpower’ could be replaced by ‘human resources, labour, labour force, personnel, staff’ (University of Melbourne 2005, 9). This brochure also suggests to use plurals to prevent generative masculine form or to use ‘they’ as singular pronoun (ibid, 10). EPVC explicitly allows the use of ‘they/their’ when the gender of a person is either unknown or non-binary or when the pronoun is used in a general way (‘when a scholar submits a manuscript, they can expect rigid review of their work’).

Overvisibility and special emphasis can create the effect that the achievements of members of a specific group are described as exceptional. Here, the advice is to only mention attributes when they matter in the context of the research. In most cases, it is not necessary to refer to a person’s sexual orientation, health status, marital status or ethnic group when referring to their professional achievements.

If you know who produced or used offensive language and images in history, we invite you to state who committed these speech acts or created or disseminated such images. We advise the use of active formulations such as ‘white colonisers created images that were racist’ over ‘the image was racist’ to avoid perpetuating a narrative of discrimination happening ‘naturally’ or ‘out of itself’.

Documentation of visual sources in online databases

Regrettably, the discussion on how to deal with discriminatory content in images and visual material is not as advanced as the discussion for verbal expressions – even though we consider this discussion deeply necessary as more collections become accessible in online databases. Digitisation projects tend to focus on the technical part: the resolution of scans or photographs, the design and interface of a database, the embedding of controlled vocabulary and thesauri as well as the set of digital tools with which users can interact with the digital material. Ethical questions on how to display discriminatory material in online environments are starting to being addressed more prominently within Digital Humanities (Risam et al. 2015–ongoing). In October 2017, a conference titled ‘Race, Memory, and the Digital humanities’ questioned not only how to contextualise discriminatory material but also how to display digitised historical record. Risam (2017) explains why creating databases for cultural records of minoritised groups alone is not enough to prevent colonial knowledge to be reincited:

And here’s why: these projects are fighting the good fight of challenging the role of race and colonialism [in] the digital cultural record, where canons are being reproduced and amplified not only in the visibility and discoverability of knowledge but in epistemologies as well. The reification of the canon in digital form is a function of not only what’s there – what gets digitized and thus represented in the digital cultural record – but also how it’s there – how those who have created these projects have presented their subjects. Namely, are they presenting them in ways that rehearse colonialist knowledge production? Or are they recognizing the role of colonialism in actively constructing the digital cultural record and, quite directly, seeking to push back against it? (Risam 2017)

Most web resources displaying historical material that we know of do not have specific strategies for the presentation of discriminatory imagery built into their design. It seems that the reasoning that ‘it is just a database’ that ‘only shows what is in the collection’ to ‘simply document the past’ prevails. This attitude seems to be influenced by the idea that neutral and objective technology displays what neutral and objective libraries, museums or archives have in their collection – an assumption that has been contested widely. Obviously, such criticisms have failed to make it into policies, broadly applied work routines and published best practice manuals. Many Australian archives now are very careful about the images they make public in order to respect the Aboriginal practice of not showing or naming the dead. For example, the ‘Digital Camera Policy’ (2016) on the website of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies specifies that some items may not be accessed or reproduced and users of the website get a content note in a pop-up box, stating ‘Please note: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or printed material’.

Researchers and archivists involved in constructing web resources that include digital images of (historical) objects should decide how (and if) to present discriminatory material. Design choices tend to present racist imagery as a material just like any other. Technically, it is possible without much change in programming to add a content notice or disclaimer to the material which is tagged as showing offensive content. Still, only few databases and web resources apply such disclaimers. The Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource features a disclaimer on the start page and displays a content note when such a slide is consulted by users.⁷ Similarly, the editors of the resource Livingstone Online address the ambivalent role of Livingstone in history and the partially discriminatory nature of records in their (online) collection.⁸ In 2015, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a major collection of mostly European art, earned big press coverage for the renaming of artworks in their online catalogue and in the explanation boards in the galleries. Rijksmuseum staff decided not to use dehumanising ethnic denominations in the explanatory texts to artworks any more, but still struggled with what terms should be applied instead (Veselinovic 2015). It should be noted that the strategies of all three, Lucerna, Livingstone Online and the Rijksmuseum focus on written commentary to visual material, not the visual material itself.

How to put scare quotes around images? Suggestions for dealing with offensive visual material

While documenting visual material with discriminatory content is problematic when left uncommented in databases and digital collections, this applies even more to the use of such material in lectures and online or printed articles. While ‘just showing what’s there’ is already a questionable attitude for archives and collections, this goes even more for scholars: as researchers, we always make choices – including the image material we use to illustrate our articles and lecture – and we are accountable for our choices. Besides very general codes for journalism, the only resource I could find online relating to a publication strategy of visual material was Wikipedia’s ‘Manual of Style: Offensive Images’ (2017), so the following suggestions are up for discussion.

Do not use images with offensive content if that is not the topic of your lecture or article

The easiest way is to not use discriminatory images if unnecessary. It is usually possible to illustrate differences between printing techniques through showing lithographs and woodcuts that do not, for example, stigmatise disability. Likewise, the various formats and types of lantern slides can be presented without choosing slides that depict all people of a certain ethnic group as stupid. The abundance of available material to illustrate various medium formats, material and technology of early popular visual culture thankfully does not force us to use discriminatory material.

A similar strategy is handled by Wikipedia. The guideline on how to deal with material that user groups could consider offensive suggests to avoid offensive images where possible and only include such material ‘if it is treated in an encyclopaedic manner i.e. only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available’. It further suggests to ‘[a]void images that contain irrelevant or extraneous elements that might seem offensive or harassing to readers; for example, photographs taken in a pornographic context would normally be inappropriate for articles about human anatomy’ (Wikipedia 2017).

Do not show the discriminatory image

If your audience can be expected to know certain images or imagery, and if the exact composition of the image is not relevant to the analysis, researchers can opt to not reproduce such an image and only describe it. For example, the press notes for a 2004 exhibition in Frankfurt am Main about anti-Jewish caricatures in German historical postcards were published without images of the postcards. In the exhibition and the published exhibition catalogue, curators and authors contextualised the material (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2004).

At EPVC, we acknowledge that the line in satire and caricature can be thin and that treating caricatures about a type or about an identifiable person may require different strategies. Based on the three premises specified at the beginning of the editorial, we will evaluate together with the author (a) if the cartoon, satire or caricature was originally designed to exclude by offence, insult and degradation, (b) if it is likely that it will have as effect to raise barriers to participation in academic debate and discuss a suitable framing/publishing strategy together.

Do not exclusively show discriminatory images when possible

Sometimes, discriminatory material needs to be presented so that everyone knows what the discussion is about. This can be the case in articles and lectures that analyse the continuity of iconography or the development of stereotypes about a specific group of people. A content note may help to establish distance from the images that will be presented. Lecturers have the opportunity to accompany discriminatory material alongside contemporary self-images created by members of the group concerned (maybe even on the same slide, so that the discriminatory image content is directly challenged). Likewise, authors can choose to include alternative images even if the historical forms of discrimination are the subject of an article or lecture. Presenting contemporary alternatives can be helpful to argue for the contingency of depiction and representation. This way, the derogatory images are not the only visuals that audiences, students and readers encounter.

Do not use offensive images for purely illustrative purposes

We advise care in the use of images of victims of violence, in particular, colonial and racist violence: such images are often taken from the perpetrator’s point of view (e.g. as a war trophy) and their publication may repeat the inhumane attitude if not framed accordingly.⁹ We advise to problematise the condition of the production of such images as part of source critique (e.g. it is likely that victims in photographic images produced by their perpetuators were forced to pose for this photograph). Do comment on the images in your article and do not use such images for mere illustrative purposes. At EPVC, we will not use images with offensive content on the cover page of our journal, for advertising the journal on flyers or on the general website of the journal.

Digitally cover discriminatory aspects after having shown them

Digital publication forms offer additional possibilities to engage with visual material. For example, it is possible to ‘digitally cover’ or blur parts of an image so that they only become visible when clicking on or hovering over it with a mouse pointer. Anatol Stefanowitsch, professor in linguistics and a blogger, blackened out discriminatory terms in comments to one of his blogposts. Those who wish to read the original comment can copy the passage into their text editors, where the text becomes visible (cf. comment underneath the blog post by Stefanowitsch 2013). This way, he makes clear that while he does not tolerate discriminatory language on his blog, he still cannot be accused of censoring the debate or the text passage in question. It is up to readers to see or not see discriminatory language as they wish. Such techniques can be adapted to visual material, e.g. to digitally cover or blur discriminatory illustrations, partially or completely, so that they become visible when hovering over or clicking on them with a mouse. Such strategies could also be used in lectures, but they are not applicable to printed work.

If the subject of an article or lecture is the discriminatory visual representation of groups of people in history, it may be an option to put a content note first, alerting the readers to the presence of such visual materials, then analysing the derogatory parts and then digitally covering or striking through those parts of the image. This strategy might work best in lectures, but it could also be adapted to written elements that are part of the images (e.g. text in bubbles of cartoons, engraved text in a print or in advertising posters). In cases where insulting expressions are used in writing as part of the image, authors could choose to digitally ‘write over’ the discriminatory terms and replace them with respectful ones, offering readers the opportunity to see the original terms when hovering over or clicking on the respective part of the image. Alternatively, the image could stay unpublished in the main article, and a link to the folder in which the file is displayed together with an editorial comment, might be another option. These strategies also do not offer solutions for printed publications.

‘Interfere’ in the presentation of the visual material

During our initial discussions, more concerns were raised about the option to ‘interfere’ in the material. Researchers could use digital tools to interfere with the material to create even more disrupting effects when engaging with images, for example by digitally ‘crossing through’ the image in semi-transparent colour. This way, images that are considered discriminatory in their entirety could be still analysed while the added features mark the image as discriminatory and ‘interrupt’ its viewing. The line between problematising historical material and altering, between repeating an image, distancing ourselves from it and creating a new one (which might come with the accusation of ‘quoting incorrectly’ or even ‘falsifying historical sources’) is not clearly demarcated. We therefore recommend that contributors err on the side of caution when doing any ‘interfering’ with the visual material. Scholars of early popular visual culture might find inspiration in artistic practices that create a dialogue between past and present and negotiate between faithful treatment of historical (arte)facts and the imperative to overcome historical discrimination.

Instead of a conclusion

As we have shown, there is not ‘one right way’ to go about and tackle these issues. What we as writers, reviewers and editors can do, however, is to be sensitive to these questions and to make well-informed, appropriate and respectful choices.

We welcome your thoughts about these suggestions. We look forward to seeing which strategies of engaging with discriminatory historical material will be suggested and which will be discarded or developed further in discussions, at EPVC and elsewhere, in a collective effort to undo discrimination in historiography. Please send your comments to Sarah Dellmann ([email protected]).

Sarah Dellmann
Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
[email protected] Kember
University of Exeter, Exeter EX4, UK
Andrew Shail
Newcastle University, NE1 7RU, UK

Acknowledgements

The editors thank all board members for their helpful comments, suggestions and additions; especially John Fullerton, Rebecca Harrison, Nicholas Hiley, Frank Kessler, Paul Moore and Sadiah Qureshi. Thanks also to Robert Heslip for literature and Olga Panteleeva for helpful comments and advice on an early version of this editorial.

Notes

1. We wish to note here that EPVC is mostly, but not exclusively, produced and read by scholars in Europe, North-America and Australia. As such, the topics, beliefs and cultures reflected in this journal only cover a part of academic activity in the field of early popular visual culture, mostly defined by the financial means of universities and institutions that can afford the subscription fees.

2. For the programme of the seminar, see http://blog.placeni.org/2013/09/heritage-practice-in-contested-spaces.html (accessed 10 November 2017), for general strategies established in relation to this, see Bryan and Coleman (2015), for a concrete policy, see Belfast City Council Chief Executive’s Department’s Memorandum ‘Good and Harmonious Working Environment’ (18 January 2017) that asked staff to ensure that ‘items and behaviour which would be considered to be potentially offensive and could give rise to problems of harassment’ should not be part of public display, and identifies such items: ‘Post-cards, pin-ups, flags, emblems, posters, graffiti, slogans, pictures, religious items, clothing which could be perceived as sectarian, (including football jerseys, ties, scarves etc. which might be perceived as having sectarian overtones)’. Furthermore, a ‘Guidance on emblems’ issued by the Equality Commission identified emblems that should be avoided at the work space and in public institutions. I thank Robert Heslip for bringing this to my attention. See also https://www.corrymeela.org/events/119/heritage-as-reconciliation (accessed 27 November 2017).

3. Whether or not the term ‘race’ should be used, and if so, if it should be put in scare quotes varies across countries. In a US-American context the term ‘race’ is often used without scare quotes and distancing through scare quotes could even be read as offensive because legal discrimination was indeed directed along the lines of race. In Germany, the equivalent of the term ‘race’ (‘Rasse’) is heavily associated with Nazi language. The resonance of different values attributed to different ‘Menschenrassen’ cannot be isolated from that word, so scare quotes around that term are considered adequate. In some cases, using ‘ethnicity’ instead of ‘race’/race provides a good solution, but in other cases, using the terms ‘race’/race is preferred to explicitly challenge racism, especially in the US. I thank Olga Panteleeva for bringing this to my attention.

4. One critique raised about the term ‘People of Colour’ is that it homogenises many different communities rather than paying adequate attention to their differences. Another argument in a different direction states that white is a colour, too, so ‘People of Colour’ in effect just means ‘people’, leaving a frisson of racialising discourse in this term. Acknowledging that people are treated differently because of their skin colour, we consider ‘People of Colour’ a useful term as long as this remains the case.

5. I thank John Fullerton for bringing this to my attention.

6. I thank Sadiah Qureshi for bringing this to my attention.

7. The disclaimer reads

‘A small proportion of records in the Lucerna database contain words or images that may be racially or otherwise offensive. They are included here as historical reproductions from a different period with different standards, and do not indicate any support or approval of such attitudes by Lucerna or any associated institutions’. https://slides.uni-trier.de/options.php (accessed 23 October 2017)

8. See especially Ward and Wisnicki (2016) at http://www.livingstoneonline.org/about-this-site/the-theory-behind-livingstone-online (accessed 15 November 2017).

9. For a short discussion about a contemporary case, see the video ‘Publishing offensive images and the right to know’, published on the website of the Ethical Journalism Network (2016).