How to present the history of covid-19? Reflections based on digital archives in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to present an overview of the digital archiving related to the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil as an argumentative approach that allows the study of topics such as: the possibilities of writing the history of Covid-19 at a global scale; the infrastructure of Brazilian digital archives; the joint construction of collections by a network of institutions and projects that have been operating alongside and progressively in the country; the social production and documentary content of the records preserved by these initiatives. Lastly, we seek to support that the scenario caused by the pandemic catalyzes and unveils problems concerning memory, archives, and history that are not novel but are at a fruitful moment for relevant theoretical and practical advances — from infrastructure improvement to the revision of epistemological references to build memory and history at a global-scale.