Processing Post | Archaeologies of the Archive

There’s a scene in Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones where Obi Wan is consulting Jocasta Nu, resident archivist of the Jedi Temple:

Jocasta Nu: Let me do a gravitational scan … There are some inconsistencies here. Maybe the planet you are looking for was destroyed.

Obi-Wan: Wouldn’t that be on record?

Jocasta Nu: It ought to be. Unless it was very recent. I hate to say it, but it looks like the system you’re searching for doesn’t exist.

Obi-Wan: That’s impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete.

Jocasta Nu: The archives are comprehensive and totally secure, my young Jedi. One thing you may be absolutely sure of – if an item does not appear in our records, it doesn’t exist.

***

Marlene Manoff’s article is a helpful point of entry into Jacque Derrida’s Archive Fever, especially if, like me, you haven’t read a single page of Derrida in more than five years! Manoff summarizes Derrida’s core arguments neatly into two main points: (1) the archive does not exist simply after the events of the history as this neutral repository of the past, but is rather itself a medium that determines and makes possible what is archivable in the first place as our retrievable past; the past then does not exist for Derrida a priori and independent of the archive writ large; (2) the Freudian binary opposition Derrida hinges on for his argument – that of the pleasures of the archival impulse to collect and preserve the past for the potentialities of the future, and that of the death drive which seeks to destroy archives in order to return to the quiet and stasis of forgetfulness or amnesia. (Manoff 11-12)

But what is crucial in Derrida’s text, and missing in Manoff’s summary, is Derrida’s overturning of the binary between the archival impulse to collect and the death drive of forgetting.If conventional wisdom tends to believe that archives are the “bastions in the war on entropy” (Tim Maly, “Dark Archives”), this privileging of the archive bears further scrutiny for Derrida: “There would indeed be no archive desire without the radical finitude, without the possibility of a forgetfulness which does not limit itself to repression.” (19) In other words, Derrida seems to be suggesting a parasitic co-dependence and co-implication between the archival impulse and that of forgetfulness. Derrida’s text, if anything else, serves as a reminder not to fall into a feverish over-investment of the archive at the expense of glossing over others (e.g. the possibility of forgetfulness) that are the crucial support structures (both physical or otherwise) of our archives.

In many ways, Derrida’s re-reading and reconfiguration of Freud’s terms here onto a (media?) theory of the archive is an interesting context to consider. Namely, Derrida seems to want to broaden and complicate the “archive”/canon of Freud’s literature, to wrestle Freud’s legacy away from the exclusive control of those who seek to franchise it (i.e. so-called Freudians) and to bring the startling insights of Freud into unchartered territories. Hence also Derrida’s use of presumably unorthodox and un-archived documents from Freud’s legacy (e.g. Jakob Freud’s correspondence with his son about the latter’s book and of the latter’s circumcision). To borrow Tim Maly and Donald Rumsfeld’s terms, we might say that Derrida was unearthing from the dark the “unknown knowns” of the Freud Archive.

While I agree with some of the charges against Derrida’s theory of the archive, such as the need to also consider the literature and experience of professional archivists on the ground, I do not think of Derrida’s theory and professional literature as mutually exclusive. Yes, it is true that perhaps had Derrida actually have some hands-on experience and practice as a professional archivist, he might have had very different thoughts on the archive. But that seems to also miss Derrida’s subtle point about the archive as well – which is already evident in the first page of his opening note. By beginning with the etymology of the word “archive,” Derrida is cheekily making the point that etymology is itself also archival in nature, by tracking the semantic histories and provenance of a particular word. By beginning his text which is supposedly about archives with etymology, Derrida is deliberately questioning the notion of what constitutes an archive, broadening the archive of the archive, and thereby asking us to consider the pitfalls of professionalization. Just as it may be that the professional Freudians would have a particular archive of Freud’s work and legacy in their agenda, professional literature on the archives may also be blinded by its own archive of the archive.

I hope all this makes sense, despite the repetitions. I want to end by saying I am not necessarily a fan of Derrida, nor a defender of his text too. And I do sense that Derrida’s text has much to learn from the insights of the literature written by professional archivists. (I myself look forward to the field trip and to further insights from the professional archivists!) But perhaps Derrida’s text is nonetheless a helpful reminder that the archive is not something that should be the sole property of anyone in particular, not even the professionals. If that happens, then all discourse of the archive will simply be “known unknowns” hidden behind the policed barrier of professionalization. The archive of the archive needs, as Derrida might suggest, to be publicly accessible, used and possibly even reconfigured by others. The locking down of archival discourse would thereby only destroy the archival possibilities of the archive. Personally, I would file Derrida’s text as a modest contribution to enrich the archive of the archive.

One Reply

  • Thanks for this excellent post, Kenneth! I appreciate your acknowledgment that the death drive and the pleasure principle — and their archival manifestations in the desires to destroy and preserve — are entangled, perhaps even dialectically related (many have argued that forgetting is a necessary component of remembering). Thanks, too, for acknowledging Derrida’s own nod to archival method, made obvious through his choice to begin with etymology. It’s always nice to see a Star Wars reference, too 🙂

    And while I very much appreciate and agree with your recommendation that the archive should be a sort of intellectual “commons” — open to use and theorization by a variety of communities — I do think there is some truth to the claim that humanists + social scientists rarely acknowledge that there *is* relevant scholarship and professional practice in the fields of library + archival science. I think a bit more cross-referencing could be helpful.

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