Blog Post - Week 5 - Archives, Authority and Memory, Cultural and Individual/Theory and Practice

Archives, as we most often come to think of them. (Source: Wikipedia Creative Commons)


“There would indeed be no archive desire without the radical finitude,
without the possibility of a forgetfulness which does not limit itself to repression.”
 (Enszer, 2012).

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This week, Prof. Murphie introduced us to the idea of theories, methods, memory and the archives in which these are commonly stored.

Key points to take away from the lecture:

•  Theory
•  Ideas about how things work
•  From latin: "theoria” - contemplation, although here we will see it as between contemplation and action.
•  Not only to understand the changing world, but to allow us to participate in the changing world.
•  Provides us with a new way of understanding already familiar things
• A form of mediation between methods and practices.
• Archives
• Ways of organising the materials we work with, e.g media, data, objects, ideas, etc...
• Memory 
• taken as complex, dynamic (constantly shifting) and ambiguous - is also where there is a lot of action at the junction of media technologies and cultural change

From this week's lecture and readings, we can deduce that archives (be it in the literal form as evidenced above, or in a more conceptual understanding i.e thoughts, memories, conversations, etc...) are home to the theories of the world. 

As a starting point, I'll call upon the text from this week's Moodle slides to introduce the idea behind archives, and too, 'Archive' fever.

"In general, for  (Jacques) Derrida (from the text Archive Fever, 1995) archives are always important because they become the basis for what counts within both society and even perhaps our sense of ourselves...

Archives constitute the most fundamental level of social and individual institutions and practices"

The term 'Archive fever', as referred to by Prof. Murphie, stems from the want to track, record, acknowledge and announce both past and current theories. (or more so today; practices, habits, actions, etc...)

Ogle (2010) argues that "...as people, we are made up of the sum total of all the experiences in our lives and in the lives of those we love. Being able to track what’s happening right now — amplified and revitalised by the real-time web — is important and will undoubtedly remain so..."

Enszer (2012)  furthers to state that "... archives are both “traditional and revolutionary; at once institutive and conservative..."

So what can we take away from this? And specifically more so in relation to 'Publics and Publishing?' 

I propose the first question to be, why we as media practitioners (and perhaps even more so as consumers) would want to archive, or store, things that have been published?

After significant thought and having read the associated texts of this weeks topic, I had concluded that the answer to that question is this: 

We collect, store and archive data so that we can track and trace the changes in epistemological / theoretical connections to world views and sub-sequential human activities. Or, in simpler terms, how lines of thought have changed over time, and how records of such determine (or help to explain) personal behaviours.

However from this, another interesting question to consider sprung forth, and one that was proposed by the ABC's Lyn Gallacher in 2010: Do (Archives) describe our past or our future?

I am also of the belief that the answer to this question is largely subject to matters of interpretation, and that not one such answer could be upheld with any great deal of conviction. 

However Derrida proposes, as again witnessed in Enszer, that while the archive seems to point to the past, it “should call into question the coming of the future.” “It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow.” (p.36)

References:

Derrida, J. (1995) ‘Archive Fever—A Freudian Impression’, Diacritics, 25(2), pp9-63

Enszer, J.R. (2008) Julie R. Enszer (personal blog), 'Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida', November 16, <http://julierenszer.blogspot.com/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html>

Gallacher, L. (2010) ‘Archive Fever’, Hindsight, Radio National, ABC, <http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/archive-fever/4953602> (podcasts)

Ogle, M. (2010) ‘Archive Fever: A love letter to the post real-time web’, mattogle.com, December 16, <http://mattogle.com/archivefever/>