Introduction: Historicizing the Master Archive (original) (raw)

Abstract

sparkles

AI

This paper explores the concept of the 'master archive' within the framework of state power and violence, drawing on Jacques Derrida's ideas of 'archive fever' and 'archival violence.' It argues that control over archives entails not only the construction of knowledge and truth but also acts of violence against marginalized histories. The author contends that the production of archives is inherently political, shaping collective memory and identity while simultaneously excluding and silencing alternative narratives.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (19)

  1. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. The System of Collecting [1968]. In The Cultures of Collecting, ed. John Elser and Roger Cardinal, 8-16. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  2. Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2007. Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  3. Burton, Antoinette, ed. 2005. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History. Durham: Duke University Press.
  4. Davis, Natalie Zemon. 2013. Foreword to The Allure of the Archive, by Arlette Farge, 53-69. Trans. Thomas Scott-Railton. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  5. Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago.
  6. Dirks, Nicholas B. 2002. Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History. In From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Future, ed. Brian Keith Axel, 47-65. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
  7. ---. 2015. Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar's Passage to India. New York: Columbia University Press.
  8. Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books.
  9. Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.
  10. Kaplan, Elisabeth. 2000. We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity. American Archivist 63 (1): 126-151.
  11. Mbembe, Achille. 2002. The Power of the Archive and Its Limits. In Refiguring the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylor, Michèle Pickover, Graeme Reid, and Razia Saleh, 19-26. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  12. Miller, Peter, and Nikolas Rose. 2008. Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  13. Osborne, Thomas. 1999. The Ordinariness of the Archives. History of the Human Sciences 12 (2): 51-64.
  14. Richards, Thomas. 1993. The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire. London: Verso.
  15. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 2005. Imperialism, History, Writing, and Theory. In Postcolonialisms: An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism, ed. Gaurav Desai and Supriya Nair, 94-116. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  16. Steedman, Carolyn. 2002. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
  17. Stewart, Susan. 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press.
  18. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2008. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  19. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.