On archives and archival impressions, this essay extends archival research to the elsewhere and otherwise. The essay asks, how do we reposition the contents of archives so that we can position ourselves in relation to it otherwise? It puts forward a theory of (decolonizing) archival impressions.

This provocation centers on the question, ¿Dónde comenzamos? Working at the tension between community and academic listening, I argue that community listening departs from individualism and mere presence as the genesis for listening. Rather, it re-situates the individual within constellations of stories, genealogies, ghosts, and hauntings. It invites, in a Derridean way, a politics of responsibility and justice towards the past, present, and future. Specifically, this provocation dares its readers in writing and rhetorical studies to take community listening seriously; to find solace both with the inability to extract and foreclose upon all knowledges and the inaccessibility for some of community listening.

Tengo un recuerdo. Over the weekend, I'd observe my to work on cars. He'd pop the hood, turn the vehicle on, and listen. He'd step back and look at me and say, "Listen mi'jo to the car." He'd lean back in and work to locate the problem. My to taught me about the capacious work involved in listening, the type of listening that centers the corporeal body as sensuous within and between the physical, temporal, and symbolic. Learning to listen as such situated me in space, place, and time. My ethos and politics of being, seeing, and doing emerged from these points of references.

She used to say… Never forget the acento It is part of your identity Y como todos los Mexicanos You need to keep your dignity...