‘Notions and Considerations of “The Archive”
The last category I am including here is about theorizing “the Archive.” A broad range of work in literary and media theory focuses attention on “the Archive.” Here I am thinking of Foucault’s notion of “the Archive” in The Archeology of Knowledge,” Derrida’s perspective in Archive Fever, and Kittler and Wolfgang Ernst’s notions of archives in Media Archeology. For the most part, this body of work is less about what goes on in an individual archives and is more about the role of “the archive” in society writ large or the idea of “the archive” as traces of the past in objects. For example, for Foucault, “the Archive” is not so much an individual set of materials but a term for the entirety of historical records/evidence that exists to work from. These theoretical takes on “the archive” can be frustrating to many archivists, as much of this work does not engaged with the professional practices of archives or with “archival theory,” the body of scholarship which archivists themselves have been building through ongoing practice and research since at least the French revolution.’