Along and against the grain: the philosophy of the archive

Archivaria, 2001

Archives in a Wider World: The Culture and Politics of Archives * SARAH TYACKE RÉSUMÉ L'auteure propose ici une réflexion sur quelques questions que soulèvent la culture, la critique littéraire, l'histoire et le post-modernisme pour la gestion des documents, les archives et les archivistes, d'un point de vue britannique. Cet essai se fonde sur les changements observés, au cours des dix dernières années, dans la place des archives telle que perçue dans différents pays. L'auteure soutient que les archivistes ont le rôle majeur de résoudre les tensions sociales contemporaines concernant ce qu'il faut conserver et détruire et ce qu'il convient d'ouvrir ou de restreindre, que ce soit pour le présent ou, plus important encore, pour les générations futures. Les archivistes doivent expliquer de façon claire les fondements de leurs décisions et comprendre les biais inhérents qui les sous-tendent. ABSTRACT This is a reflective essay on some of the cultural, literary criticism, historical, and postmodern implications for records management and archiving, archives, and archivists from a point of view situated in the United Kingdom. It is based on observing the changes, over the past ten years, in the position of archives in various countries' perceptions. The author maintains that archivists have the critical role of producing an archiving resolution of the tensions in society at any one time between what should be kept and destroyed, and what should be open and closed-both for the present and, more importantly, for future generations. Archivists need to make the manner of the archival resolution clear and understand the inherent biases in the processes necessary to achieve that resolution. * This is a revised version of an unrefereed article for a Festchrift. I am indebted to discussions I have had with Michael Moss, Elizabeth Hallam-Smith, and Ian Willison. In particular, they have improved my own slender knowledge of the battleground between postmodernists (or at least some) and other historians (or at least some) and drawn my attention to the work of Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History, 2d ed. (London, 1997).

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https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/issue/view/429, 2001

ABSTRACT This is a reflective essay on some of the cultural, literary criticism, historical , and postmodern implications for records management and archiving, archives, and archivists from a point of view situated in the United Kingdom. It is based on observing the changes, over the past ten years, in the position of archives in various countries' perceptions. The author maintains that archivists have the critical role of producing an archiving resolution of the tensions in society at any one time between what should be kept and destroyed, and what should be open and closed-both for the present and, more importantly, for future generations. Archivists need to make the manner of the archival resolution clear and understand the inherent biases in the processes necessary to achieve that resolution. The subject of archives is, on the face of it, dry and dusty, but nevertheless fascinating for all sorts of reasons to many millions of people across the world. Moreover, in its formal, organizational, and utilitarian guise as "Arch-ives," it is increasingly emerging from the "basement to the boardroom" in governments and organizations and becoming a cultural phenomenon at the same *

Public Knowledge, 2019

'Archive Stories, Archive Realities' is a Chapter in 'Public Knowledge' by Freerange Press that explores the role and power of archives. "“When brought together as a public archive in the form of a state institution, archives are amplified into a grandiose narrative of nationhood—a metanarrative. Indeed, some theorists go so far as to claim there is no state without archives. This is because archives have power. And in turn, archives are created and shaped by ever-contested power relations. Public archives are not ‘passive storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed.’ Their holdings ‘wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies’. Archives allow people to marshal stories and to make meaning. Archives are the very possibility of politics.”

International Journal of the Book, 2008

This article seeks to open a discursive space in which to reflect on issues of Holocaust historiography arising from emerging research on personal archives collected by 'ordinary' people in relation to the Holocaust. The explorations, intended as a discussion piece, are anchored in a specific context, namely that of the Dorrith Sim Collection (DMSC) which is held in the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) in Glasgow. This collection offers a focus to concretize the historiographical discussion in a largely un-researched collection, while enabling consideration of a range of related collections and publications. The article investigates the historiographical practices of those involved in the collection, preservation, presentation, and publication processes, and considers the inherent ethical choices: choices that highlight the agency of the family, the archivist and the scholar. Ethical choices, here, the investment of specific meanings and claims to significance, are amplified in this context because of their connection to genocide. I suggest that a 'transparent historiography' which accounts for the research process within the published narrative could address the challenges arising from the necessity to be selective about what to collect, preserve, and, write about, and how to do so. I borrow from other fields of research and professional practice to highlight possible avenues along which to advance historiographical discussion. The history of the archive is the recognition of loss. For archives to collect the past, the past has to come to mind as something imperiled and distinctive. 1 You should work on the Dorrith Sim Collection, says my friend and colleague Mia Spiro. We are standing in front of the shelves holding more than twenty archive boxes in the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) in Glasgow. It is autumn 2015 and our joint project on Jewish migration to Scotland in partnership with the SJAC has just begun. The opening phase of our work is a mapping exercise of the SJAC's collections in relation to a broad set of research areas, and making decisions on which aspects of the archive we will focus. Religion, the arts,

Digithum, 2013

In this article, I argue that contemporary art has played an essential role both in the transformation of contemporary archives and within the framework of the archival turn (for example, anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler discusses the archival turn in the context of colonial studies, and authors such as Terry Cook and Eric Ketelaar use the term in the field of archival science). More specifically, I will explore this influence from the viewpoint of different artistic movements before concluding with visual art and a case study of the installation Arxiu d'arxius (Archive of archives, 1998-2006), a personal archive by the Catalan artist Montserrat Soto. The aim is to analyse how art has both changed how documents are created and displayed and provided new ways of organizing information and transmitting cultural memory, especially with regard to documenting aspects of history associated with pain, oppression and war (generally drawing on oral memory) and with certain groups (women, slaves and minority indigenous communities) that have been excluded from the documentary repositories of traditional archives, whether due to institutional neglect or because they were inevitably silenced and censored. To this end, I will first offer a brief overview of the origin and evolution of the concept of archive up to the present day, highlighting the main transformations it has undergone. I will then argue that contemporary art has engaged intensively with the idea of document storage and memory. Finally, building on these premises, I will analyse the three archives included in Arxiu d'arxius that are based on oral memory: the archive of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War; the archive of American slavery; and the archive of the Aboriginal Australian community.

In the last two decades, an increasing number of artists have engaged the spectres of colonialism that continue to haunt us in our postcolonial present. Interrupting established historical narratives of colonial domination, artists have started to address the legacy of imperialism by examining the colonial archive. At work in the archive, these artists examine the possibilities of decolonialising colonial subjectivities. Through the return, recuperation, and re-enactment of archives, archival art points to the potential of forgotten pasts and unanticipated futures lingering in the imperial archive. As the articles in this volume demonstrate, such archival interventions often serve an emancipatory agenda.

2019

Feminist Media Histories, 2016

The digital humanities have changed the ways we talk about and approach media archives. Those of us with cultural and social capital in the West work from homes, offices, and workspaces that are often countries (if not continents) away from the archives that house the materials we examine. As long as we have access to the internet and the use of a computer or mobile screen, we can generally see digitized materials freely and at any time. Our own books, articles, lectures, and notes are also online; they are no longer spatially separate or temporally successive to the primary sources they explore. Consequently questions about online access to media history, digital research infrastructure, and cultural and political pedagogy have come to the fore. A host of related questions has acquired a new urgency: What is lost and gained in the shift from physical to digital archiving? What and how do archives preserve, and how do they curate public access? How do we search for digital material? Which tools are used to modify and limit our search options, and what does this tell us about digital networks and our relationships to them? Who or what is featured and findable in the databases we use today? Contributors to this Special Issue include: Deb Verhoeven: As Luck Would Have It: Serendipity and Solace in Digital Research Infrastructure Sarah Atkinson: Digitally Preserving Potter: The Dailiness and Feminization of Labor within Digital Filmmaking and Archiving Liz Clarke: “No Accident of Good Fortune”: Autobiographies and Personal Memoirs as Historical Documents in Screenwriting History Hana Washitani: Gentō: Still-Image Projection as Alternative Cultural Heritage

Archival Science, 2013