Along and against the grain: the philosophy of the archive

Abstract

Humanities award, the conference was part of the ongoing Investigating the Archive project which was established to examine the role and nature of archives and the debates surrounding their selection, application and interpretation. The project aims at promoting interdisciplinary scholarship on research into the construction, representation and use of archives, examining the theoretical issues inherent in their preservation and interpretation in all formats. Two other interdisciplinary conferences have been held during the first phase of the project: A Triangular Traffic: Literature, Slavery and the Archive (2007), which considered the literary/archival and creative and scholarly work in literature, grounded in archival research; and Media, Migration, Archive (2008), which examined the issues surrounding the use of photographic collections, both practically and theoretically. The second of these brought together archivists and theorists from a variety of disciplines for discussions relating to historical context, method and policy in the context of the empirical investigation of photography's archival presence. Two workshops, 'Across the Divide: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Archive' and 'Archives and Publics' sustained the interrogative and self-reflexive methodological critiques brought to light during the conferences.The Philosophy of the Archive (2008) conference focused on the philosophy and politics of identifying, selecting and preserving archives. It addressed debates surrounding the evidential and historical value of archives, social and political agendas and the changing nature of archives. It also examined how social, cultural and personal memories and identities were represented and recorded and the inherent tension between the use of archives to ensure accountability and their role as cultural artefacts. Keynote speakers included Verne Harris, Terry Cook and Elizabeth Shepherd who provided the focus and context for five sessions: Recording and Representation, Collecting and Representing, Memory and Identity, Social Memory and Evidence and Representation, Justice and Power.The questions raised by this conference were based upon the diverse interdisciplinary agendas which have an impact on the creation, interpretation and use of archival material. Attended by theorists, archivists, historians and discipline-specific scholars, the conference addressed the ways that institutional, political and temporal frameworks have impacted on how archives are accumulated and used. The conference debated ethical issues and policy formulation in relation to use and abuse of archives in specific contexts and in recording social, cultural and personal memory and identity. In particular, it examined how collections relate to larger stories of regional, state or national narratives.In framing the conference within the context of the title The Philosophy of the Archive, we hoped to be deliberately provoking, to attract papers that would echo the aims of this journal to consider 'archival science in the broadest sense ...

(Inter)racialization: the regulation of domestic and urban space in housing North African migrants in post-colonial France

“…I looked at the archive as an "object of knowledge" rather than a "source of knowledge" (Arondekar, 2005;Stoler, 2002). Scholars have argued for a reading "against the archival grain," in which the researcher attempts to uncover that which is not being said, those knowledges that are disqualiRied (Burton, 2006;Whatley & Brown, 2009). Stoler has famously argued for a "reading along the archival grain": a reading that treats the archive as a "force Rield," to which the research should surrender (albeit not concede) to trace its logics, to show what and how governmental rationales order governance (Stoler, 2009).…”