Overview

How do you write a history of a group that has been written out of history? In The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force, world-famous archaeologist La Stef and the clandestine Con Sapos Archaeological Collective track down the ""facts"" about the elusive RCAF, the Rebel Chicano Art Front that, through an understandable mix-up with the Royal Canadian Air Force, became the Royal Chicano Air Force. La Stef and her fellow archaeologists document the plight and locura que cura of the RCAF, a group renowned for its fleet of adobe airplanes, ongoing subversive performance stance, and key role as poster makers for the United Farm Workers Union during the height of the Chicano civil rights movement. As the Con Sapos team uncovers tensions between fact and fiction in historical consciousness and public memory, they abandon didactic instruction and strive instead to offer a historiography in which various cultural paradigms already intersect seamlessly and on equal ground. That they often fail to navigate the blurred lines between ""objective"" Western archival sciences and Indigenous/Chicana/o cosmologies reflects the very human predicament of documenting the histories of complicated New Worlds everywhere. Uniquely blending art history, oral history, cultural studies, and anthropology, The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force suspends historical realities and leaps through epochs and between conversations with various historical figures, both dead and alive, to offer readers an intimate experience of RCAF history.

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9781477308707

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Reviews

The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force deftly transforms the Sacramento-based, Chicanx art collective’s history into an assemblage of artworks, essays, and documents based on a decade’s worth of material gleaned from interviewing, befriending, and working with its members...Sauer’s engagingly unique book is a welcome alternative to traditional narratives and academic archives. In it, she skillfully takes on the challenge of wrangling a history largely gleaned from conversations. While Sauer admits that the texts should not be 'looked upon as sources of historical truth,' her book nevertheless succeeds in channeling the RCAF’s spirit and voice while also helping to reclaim their role in both California and Chicanx history. * US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal *

The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force deftly transforms the Sacramento-based, Chicanx art collective's history into an assemblage of artworks, essays, and documents based on a decade's worth of material gleaned from interviewing, befriending, and working with its members...Sauer's engagingly unique book is a welcome alternative to traditional narratives and academic archives. In it, she skillfully takes on the challenge of wrangling a history largely gleaned from conversations. While Sauer admits that the texts should not be 'looked upon as sources of historical truth, ' her book nevertheless succeeds in channeling the RCAF's spirit and voice while also helping to reclaim their role in both California and Chicanx history.-- US Latina & Latino Oral History Journal (9/28/2021 12:00:00 AM)

Author Information

A cofounding editor of A Bolha Editora and executive editor of Copilot Press, Stephanie Sauer is an interdisciplinary text-based artist and visiting lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute.

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