Archive Stories is a collection of essays that explores the meaning of an archive and researchers interactions with these spaces. Each chapter addresses a different archive and the experience each research had while working within them. An archive becomes much more than a place to house objects as we begin to consider the political, social, and personal relationships between archives, their keepers, and their users. As Craig Robertson wrote in his chapter about his research on the passport, archives mold national character, “prioritizing and privileging specific stories and peoples” (71). The collections are going to be biased from their creation and organization. What should be saved? Who gets to decide? Who gets to see what? How should everything be cataloged? Tony Ballantyne writes about his experience with the archives of Samuel Peal and how that particular collection is being marginalized within the larger New Zealand archives. That collection made him rethink and restructure his view on empire: an event that made him scrap almost his entire project to start fresh. And yet, because that particular collection does not fit neatly into the current national narrative, it is pushed to the margins. The state has great power in the framing of what is considered significant, and significance is in the eye of the beholder. Those with the power get to decide who sees what, as we gather from Ghosh’s interactions with India’s archives. By withholding information, archivists can push the interpretation of history in a particular direction.
That being said, archives are indispensable repositories for history. All of the historians in this book interact with archives and stress the importance of these places for study. I found particularly relevant Renee Sentilles essay about archives and the Internet. More and more, we are conducting research from the comfort of our own homes, trolling the web for sources. Sentilles argues that we lose something essential by limiting ourselves to this form of research. She writes, “losing oneself in a pile of textbooks in the back of a library brings a measure of contemplation that easily surpasses impatiently surfing the Web” (153). Some sort of context is lost. This hit home for me, for I know that I am guilty of conducting much of my research through online databases and the like. The convenience factor is hard to ignore, but perhaps we do miss something. John Randolph ends his essay mentioning how one of the letters within the Bakunin collection has the words “To be burned” written in the margin (226). One can read about this letter in articles online or within another text, but those may not mention this telling detail. Randolph ponders how this is changing as digitization becomes more widespread; the need to visit the actual archive becomes less vital. We’ll be able to see a scan of the document containing that detail. But I think Sentilles is right – that we will miss something if we stop utilizing archives. That time to think within a space as powerful as an archive, housing history, is invaluable.
You discussed "the political, social, and personal relationships between archives, their keepers, and their users." I find this to be an important aspect of archives and research. Archivists hold a wealth of knowledge to the collection housed at the institution. They are an invaluable and often overlooked component of research. If the archivist has little knowledge of your subject matter, they may know another professional with knowledge of a collection that pertains to your research within that archive or another. Though Ghoush and Robertson illustrated how archivists can hinder research, I think the greatest threat in electronic archives is the loss of interaction with an archivist on a personal level beyond internet correspondence or phone calls. Though I have been one to use online databases and peruse collections at archives online, the vital interaction with a person who understands the collection is not present. If researchers were to lose out on this asset, their research could be affected. Luckily, Sentilles does not foresee digital archives becoming the future.
ReplyDeleteFoucault would argue (against a Marxist like myself) that economics and politics are really just manifestations of the human will to power. Ways in which this power is manifested is in knowledge, its organization, taxonomy, and institutional use. These institutions are often byproducts or controlled by the state apparatus, and the culture protecting them (the social characteristics of the archivers themselves.)I make this point because there was a sense of Foucaultian analysis throughout this book, and it makes a lot of sense really, sometimes the relationships of these institutions and the public they serve really does go a little deeper than economics, even if economics is a big part of the picture.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your conclusions about the government's ability to shape it's archives. The German archives show another example of how archives can change because of the government in power. After World War II the archivists began leaving out information on Jewish experiences. I think that Ghosh's experiences at the Indian archives reflect archivists shaping the knowledge availiable at an archive.
ReplyDeleteI like your position about digitizing archives which could lead to missing details in the archive. With people advancing technology in the United States, it is important to keep digitizing information. This would make archival information more accessible to the public. I think online data should be used as a starting place for research, but nothing can replace actually looking through archives.
I entirely agree that internet research can have a cheapening effect on how much intellectual depth a person's research requires. At the risk of sounding stereotypically "old," I sometimes wonder what research will mean to children raised on the internet from birth. Will going into a dusty archive become a lost art? At the same time, digitization of archival material can also somewhat democratize archival research, since an internet connection is certainly cheaper than traveling to and living in a foreign country for an extended period of time.
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