It is becoming more and more difficult to get to the facts of the matter. The long-awaited release of government records arrive blackened out — heavily redacted and illegible. Declassified documents, verifying war crimes and clandestine military operations, turn damp and moth-infested in archival warehouses and basements. Freedom-of-Information requests are rejected on grounds of research costs and lack of specificity. These procedural roadblocks exist whilst the rightwing pundits often enjoy boundless informational and epistemic freedom in a post-truth climate.

Given that the act of reading declassified/redacted documents and writing FOI requests is a complicated and exhausting process, the proposed workshop encourages attendees to refine their FOI writing skills — with attention paid to the specific conventions of EU, US, and UK FOI frameworks. The workshop will also provide attendees an opportunity to read a range of recently declassified materials collectively, opening up the space to communal interpretation and analysis. Through an interactive program, we will consider the forms and genres of classification, attend to particular strategies of gatekeeping, blackboxing and obfuscation, and finally, explore recent and emerging forms of ‘epistemic’ violence and alethocide (the deliberate destruction of truth). The workshop will be followed by a lecture on the writing and study of history in ‘redacted times’.

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