On absence and abundance: biography as method in archival research

Abstract

Geographical scholarship has rightly problematised the act of archival research, showing how the practice of archiving is not only concerned with how a society collectively remembers, but also forgets. As such, the dominant motif for discussing historical methods in geography has been through the lens of absence: the archive is a space of ‘traces’, ‘fragments’ and ‘ghosts’. In this paper I suggest that the focus on incompleteness and partiality, while true, may also belie what many geographers working in archives find their greatest difficulty: an overwhelming volume of source materials. I reflect on my own research experiences in the pacifist archive to suggest that the growing scale and scope of many collections, along with the taxing research demands of transnational perspectives, pose immediate practical challenges for geographers characterised as much by abundance as by absence. In the second half of the paper, drawing on recent scholarship in history and geography, I argue that the method of biography offers one possible strategy for navigating archival abundance, allowing geographers to tell stories that are wider, deeper and more revealingly complex within the existing time and financial constraints of humanities research.

Papering, arranging, and depositing: Learning from working with an Istanbul archive

“…Its apparent scarcity prompts us to imagine the contexts through which paper circulated: paper mills, stationery stores, warehouses, offices, and beyond. Although a passing fragment, this memo's reference to ozalid paper reminds us that documents’ presence within an archive is connected to wider technologies of production and use – paper pulp, typewriters, printing presses, ozalid paper, mimeographs, and more – that, in turn, make possible particular kinds of archival cultures (Hodder, , p. 454) and bureaucratic practice more generally (Kafka, ; Ogborn, ).…”

“…This expansion of digital archives is not unique to Istanbul. As Jake Hodder has noted, geographers engaging in archival fieldwork must now grapple not just with the absences within archival sources but their new digital abundance (Hodder, ). For urban geographers in particular, the growing number of new city‐based or city‐focused archival collections furnishes both opportunities and challenges for writing histories of urban space.…”

Critical geopolitics of Palestinian diasporas' autobiographical practice

“…Autobiography, in that regard, is an “autoethnographic practice” of self‐realisation whereby the subject is enlivened and re‐examines its worldview (ibid, p. 13). Jake Hodder (2017) examines the value of biography from the perspective of historical geography and suggests that biographical narratives construct everyday microgeographies that capture the suffering, contradictions and ironies of human lives. While such (auto)biographical narratives may not necessarily represent wider social lives at particular historical junctures, they illuminate variegated spaces of life often overshadowed by the concerns of empire (Hodder, 2017).…”

Historical geography III: Hope persists

“…Whilst memory itself has attracted attention in human geography more widely (see Jones and Garde-Hansen, 2012), historical and cultural geographers have tended to work within the folds of memory, thinking more explicitly about how the past returns through haunting, spectres, ghosts and echoes. The ways in which these returns are often discussed relate to (archival) practice, with Sarah Mills (2013) noting the range of ‘ghosts’ that haunt the margins of historical-geographical work (see Hodder, 2017; Edwards, 2017; Craggs, 2016). Yet the ghosts often refer to the forgotten, the silent and the marginalized, to their absence in the records or written histories.…”