Bookshelves

Home / Bookshelves

Archival research is arguably a thread of transcultural studies (Bond, Rapson 2014), within the wider debate on cultural memory (Assmann 1992; Erll, Nünning 2008). In that context, memory archives function as a sort of "retroactive palimpsest" (Bonadei 2009; Lee 2020), useful for outlining the permeable or porous quality of archives themselves (Bordina et al. 2012; Cometa 2020).

As repositories of individual (Brockmeier 2015), collective and cultural memory (Bastian, Alexander 2009), archives have often been investigated as data sources (Corens et al. 2018) suited to the transmission of knowledge (Walsham 2016) and tied to the exercise of law and power (Carter, Harlow 2003; Stoler 2009; Rubin 2012; Trouillot, Carby 2015). Also, archives preside to the certification of heritage and the sedimentation of identity (Caraffa, Serena 2015). While archival preservation of memory in documentary form has often served the intent of imperial and national grand narratives, it has also functioned as a site of resistance and resilience to oblivion on the part of minorities and vulnerable social groups (Geary 1996; Assmann 2016).

With regard to antiquity and up to the 18th Century, the fraught relation between memory and space was investigated primarily within mnemotechnics, the art of recollecting based upon the staging of mental archives designed to recall notions and events (Yates 1966). It was via Hegel’s idealism that such “mental archives” gained the kind of fluidity later exploited by J. Derrida (1974) in his coinage of “monumémoire”: the notion which eventually inspired P. Nora (1984-1992) to define such “material sites of memory” as memorials, monuments, museums (Marstine 2005; Witcomb, Message 2012), archives and libraries (Summit 2008; Mays 2013). Between the 19th and the 20th Centuries, following the consolidation of national states and the affirmation of empire, the organization of knowledge and the pursuit of order called for new validation criteria (Bonadei 2018; Calzoni 2007a). As a consequence, practices of cultural memory witnessed the emergence of 'functional' data clusters, meant to redraft and oversee memory's boundaries (Bhabha 1990). At the same time archives shifted to collecting the memory of places by separating it, in a sense, from its spatiality, thereby building an intangible, visual or textual dimension (Maifreda 2022). Being immaterial and at the same time quite tangible, archives played in this sense a crucial role in the construction of identities (Graham 2002; Wasson 2005). They also worked, however, as “functional sites of memory” (Nora 1984), dynamic topoi for display and confrontation, for the destruction and reconstruction of memories and narratives (Hou 2010).

Theoretical debate on archives as both material repositories or sites of memory and epistemic tools (Foucault 1969) has been a major cause of controversy (Hamilton 2022): on the one hand, it paved the way to a further consolidation of archives as institutionalized enclaves of power and order (Dovey 2008). On the other, it paved the way to an investigation of such sites of memory as repositories of textual and visual counter-memories (Bolzoni 2001; Calzoni 2007b), “dissonant narratives” (Downey 2015) giving voice to the unspeakable suffering brought about by slavery, colonialism, deportations and persecutions (Agamben 1998; Calzoni 2005; Rothberg 2009; Boulter 2011; Hirsch 2012; Osborne 2020). This led to theorizing the archive as a locus of “semantic undecidability” suspended between “order” and “origin” (Derrida 1995): this shift anticipated a deconstructivist approach to archives (Burgin 1996; Harris 2020) and their investigation within an “Archiviolithic” imaginary (Colebrook 2014) and the digital humanities (Mkadmi 2021, Anderson 2022). According to visual studies, archives as functional sites of memory entail the concept of a database of memory (De Kosnik 2016; Ernst 2013), which aims to enshrine the digital performativity (Borggree, Gade 2013; Hoskins A. 2017) and the audiovisual performativity (Baron 2014) of memory within documediality (Ferraris 2017). As the relevance of the world wide web continues to grow, material archives and museums are ever more entrusted to digitization (Parry 2010; Carbonell Messias 2012; Kidd 2014). They thus take on renewed importance as functional sites for the 'institutional establishment' of memory (Plate, Smelik 2013), and open up practices of preservation to novel challenges, epistemic and rhetorical (Morra 2020).

State of the art research in this direction reads archives themselves as embodying a semiotic density. They are 'texts', whose layers exhibit a stratified pattern deposited by imaginary threads, by alternative narratives told by plural subjects and voices. These all attest to a vast heritage field, both tangible and intangible, which the DisArch team intends to explore by focusing at once on writing and memory in their deep-rooted ties with archives (Corgnati 2020).

Bibliography

Adorno Th. W., Horkheimer M. (1944), Dialektik der Aufklärung, Amsterdam
Agamben G. (1998), Quel che resta di Auschwitz, Turin
Albertazzi S. (2017), Letteratura e fotografia, Rom
Anderson C. B. (ed. 2022), Digital Humanities and Libraries and Archives in Religious Studies, Berlin
Assmann A. (1999), Erinnerungsräume, München
– (2016), Formen des Vergessens, Göttingen
Assmann J. (1992), Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, München
Baldacci C. (2016), Archivi impossibili, Monza
Bamberg M., Andrews M. (2004), Considering Counter-Narratives, Amsterdam-Philadelphia
Baron J. (2014), The Archive Effect, London
Bastian J. A., Alexander B. (eds. 2009), Community Archives, London
Baumann R. M. (ed. 1979), A Manual of Archival Techniques, Harrisburg
Bhabha H. K. (1990), Nation and Narration, London
Bolzoni L. (2001), The Gallery of Memory, Toronto
Bonadei R. (ed. 2009), Naturaleartificiale. Il palinsesto urbano, Bergamo
– et al. (ed. 2018), Città come frontiere creative: visioni, pratiche, progetti, Milan-Paris
Bond L., Rapson J. (eds. 2014), The Transcultural Turn, Berlin
Bordina A. et al. (eds. 2012), The Archive, Udine
Borggreen G., Gade R. (2013), Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, Copenhagen
Boulter J. (2011), Melancholy and the Archive, London
Brockmeier J. (2015), Beyond the Archive, Oxford
Burgin V. (1996), In/Different Spaces, Berkel
Calzoni R. (2005), Walter Kempowski, W. G. Sebald e i tabù della memoria collettiva tedesca, Pasian di Prato (UD)
– (2007a), “Luoghi della memoria”, in Agazzi E., Fortunati V. (eds.), Memoria e saperi, Rom: 531-545
– (2007b), “Fotografia e memoria”, in Agazzi E., Fortunati V. (eds.), Memoria e saperi, Rom: 323-340
Caraffa C., Serena T. (eds. 2015), Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation, Berlin
Carbonell Messias B. (ed. 2012), Museum Studies, Chichester
Carter M., Harlow B. (eds. 2003), Archives of Empire, Durham
Chambers I. et al. (2016), The Postcolonial Museum, London
Colebrook C. (2014), “Archiviolithic: the Anthropocene and the hetero-archive”, Derrida Today, 1/7: 21-43
Cometa M. (2020), Cultura visuale, Milan
Corens L. et al. (eds. 2018), Archives & Information in the Early Modern World, Oxford
Corgnati M. (ed. 2020), Archivi, Luoghi, Paesaggi digitali, Rom
Crane S. (ed. 2000), Museums and Memory, Stanford
Creet J., Kitzmann A. (eds. 2011), Memory and Migration, Toronto
Crownshaw R. et al. (2010), The Future of Memory, New York
De Kosnik A. (2016), Rogue Archives, Cambridge
Derrida J. (1974), Glas, Paris
– (1995), Mal d’archive, Paris
Dovey K. (2008), Framing Places, London
Downey A. (ed. 2015), Dissonant Archives, London
Elkins J. (eds. 2009), Visual Literacy, London
Erll A., Nünning A. (eds. 2008), Cultural Memory Studies, Berlin
Ernst W. (2013), Digital Memory and the Archive, Minneapolis
Federici F., Saba C. G. (eds. 2014), Cinema and Art as Archive, Milan-Udine
Ferraris M. (2017), Postverità e altri enigmi, Bologna
Floridi L. (2014), The Fourth Revolution, Oxford
Foucault M. (1969), L’Archéologie du savoir, Paris
Geary P. J. (1996), Phantoms of Remembrance, Princeton
Ghezzi A. et al. (eds. 2014), The Ethics of Memory in a Digital Age, London
Graham B. (2002), “Heritage as Knowledge”, Urban Studies 5/6-39: 1003-1017
Gurler E. E., Basak O. (2013), “The Effects of Public Memorials on Social Memory and Urban Identity”, Procedia 82: 858-863
Hamilton C. (ed. 2002), Refiguring the Archive, Dordrecht
Harris V. (2020), Ghosts of Archive, New York
Hirsch M. (2012), The Generation of Postmemory, New York
Hoskins A. (ed. 2017), Digital Memory Studies, New York
Hou J. (ed. 2010), Insurgent Public Space, New York
Kidd J. (2014), Museums in the New Mediascape, Farnham
Lee J. A. (2020), Producing the Archival Body, New York
Macneil H., Eastwood T. (eds. 2017), Currents of Archival Thinking, Santa Barbara
Maifreda G. (2022), Immagini contese, Milan
Marstine J. (2005), New Museum Theory and Practice, Chichester
Mays S. (ed. 2013), Libraries, Literatures, and Archives, New York
Mkadmi A. (2021), Archives in the Digital Age, London
Morra L. M. (ed. 2020), Moving Archive, Waterloo
Nora P. (ed. 1984-1992), Les lieux de la mémoire, 9 vols., Paris
Osborne D. (2020), What Remains, Rochester
Parry R. (2010), Museums in a Digital Age, London
Plate L., Smelik A. (eds. 2013), Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, New York
Previtali G. (2021), Educazione visuale, New York
Rivoltella P. C. (2017), Media Education, Brescia
Roberts L. (2015), Navigating the “Archive City”, London
Rothberg M. (2009), Multidirectional Memory, Stanford
Rubin A. N. (2012), Archives of Authority, Princeton
Stoler A. L. (2009), Along the Archival Grain, Princeton
Summit J. (2008), Memory’s Library, Chicago
Trouillot M.-R., Carby H. V. (2015), Silencing the Past, Boston
Wallace D. A. et al. (eds. 2020), Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice, New York
Walsham A. (2016), “The Social History of the Archive”, Past & Present 230/11: 9-48
Wasson H. (2005), Museum Movies, Berkeley
Witcomb A., Message K. (eds. 2012), Museum Theory, Chichester
Yates F. (1966), The Art of Memory, London