Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar

Front Cover
......Page 1
Title Page
......Page 2
Copyright......Page 3
Contents......Page 4
Preface and Acknowledgments......Page 8
PART I 
Archives and Archiving......Page 12
"Something She Called a Fever"......Page 15
Publicite and the Public in the Archives of France......Page 31
Intimate Thoughts, Official History, and Public Archives: The Case of the Correspondance......Page 34
Affaire d'Haussonville......Page 36
Evidence in the Press......Page 39
Conclusion......Page 42
The Repeatable Experiment......Page 47
Dragon at the Gate?......Page 48
Reference Archivist Roles......Page 49
Conclusion......Page 52
Between Veneration and Loathing......Page 54
Ve neration......Page 55
Loathing......Page 59
Indifference......Page 61
Conclusion......Page 62
Archives and Houses......Page 65
Archiving Houses......Page 67
Introduction: "Daguerreotypomania"......Page 72
From Process to Praxis......Page 74
Photography, Science, and Observation......Page 75
Photographic Witnessing across Space......Page 76
Photographic Witnessing across Time......Page 79
The Notion of Photographic Truth......Page 81
Art, Light, and Nature......Page 83
Facts in a New Form of Communication......Page 85
Shared Vocabularies of Modernity......Page 87
Paradigm Lost: The Postmodern Destabilization of Truth......Page 88
PART II 
Archives in the Production of Knowledge......Page 96
The Institution......Page 100
The Community......Page 101
The Stuff......Page 102
The History (out of the Closet)......Page 104
The History (in the Archive)......Page 108
History and Memory: Where?......Page 109
Historical Background......Page 112
The German Perspective......Page 114
Medieval Archivists as Authors......Page 117
The Question of Access......Page 125
Archival Records Containing Individual, Personal Files and Information......Page 126
Archival Policies of Retention and Disposition......Page 127
Prospects and Questions of the Future......Page 128
Social Oblivion: A Case of Limitation of Access?......Page 129
Concluding Remarks......Page 131
Past Imperfect (l'imparfait)......Page 132
Language as Artistry......Page 133
Provenance as Description......Page 134
Gathering and Situating Archives......Page 135
Defiance of Linearity, Archives to Art......Page 136
Antiquarian Sentimentality......Page 137
Modern Control over Modern Aesthetics......Page 138
Description as Mediation......Page 139
Universalizing Tendencies......Page 140
Understanding Others' Mediation......Page 141
On Artifacts......Page 145
Pragmatic Approaches to the Artifact......Page 147
Redefining the Artifact......Page 149
On Manuscript Artifacts......Page 151
The Project......Page 153
Conclusion......Page 154
Appetite for Data......Page 155
Instruments of Empowerment......Page 156
Archival Temples......Page 157
Professional Distrust......Page 158
The Power of the Archivist......Page 159
Archival Representation......Page 162
Representations by Creators......Page 164
Representations of Archivists......Page 165
Representational Systems......Page 168
Conclusions......Page 172
PART III 
Archives and Social Memory......Page 176
Remembering the Future......Page 180
The Origins of CAIN......Page 193
The Fonds and CAIN......Page 194
The Fonds and the Canadian Experience......Page 195
Archival Coordinators: Gatekeepers or Stewards?......Page 196
The To ngues of Men and of Angels......Page 197
All Fonds Are Not Created Equal......Page 198
Reality Check: The Search for Funds and the Implications for Sustainability......Page 200
Achieving the Potential of CAIN......Page 201
Archives, Heritage, and History......Page 204
Misreading Archival History......Page 205
The Chaos of Accumulation......Page 206
The Perils of Innovation......Page 208
New Tr ends Jeopardize Archival Accessibility......Page 209
Why Heritage Subverts Archives......Page 210
Erosion of Familiar Terms of Discourse......Page 212
How Privatization Turned Britain's Red Telephone Kiosk into an Archive of the Welfare State......Page 218
Flagship on the Rocks......Page 219
A Matter of Style......Page 220
A Symbol of National Embarrassment......Page 222
Archives: Particles of Memory or More?......Page 226
Lookin' for a Home: Independent Oral History Archives in Italy......Page 230
The Tr oublesome Issues Raised by the JFK Memorabilia Controversy......Page 236
Background......Page 237
Robert White's Relationship with Evelyn Lincoln......Page 239
Evelyn Lincoln's Death and the Devise of JFK Memorabilia to the Kennedy Library and Robert White......Page 240
The Assassination Review Board's Deposition of Robert White......Page 241
The Legal Claims against Robert White and His Collection......Page 242
Postscript......Page 243
Classified Federal Records and the End of the Cold War......Page 248
"Just a Car": The Kennedy Car, the Lincoln Chair, and the Study of Objects......Page 256
PART IV 
Archives, Memory, and Political Culture......Page 264
Memories of Colonization......Page 268
Archives, Epistemological Skepticism, and the Historic Turn......Page 278
From Extraction to Ethnography in the Colonial Archives......Page 280
Along the Archival Grain......Page 282
Civilities and Credibilities in Archival Production......Page 283
Cultural Logics and Archival Conventions......Page 284
Colonial Commissions as Stories That States Tell Themselves......Page 285
Archival Seductions and State Secrets......Page 286
Colonial Archives as "Systems of Expectation"......Page 287
The Provincial Archive as a Place of Memory......Page 291
Conclusion......Page 298
Maroons in the Archives......Page 302
Archives on the Margins......Page 304
Archives in the Fiction......Page 306
A Prayer for the Archives......Page 308
Redemption's Archive......Page 312
Liberation's Alibi......Page 314
The Agony of the Past, the Violence of the Future......Page 319
Conclusion......Page 327
Politics of Placement......Page 332
The University of Fort Hare......Page 333
Politics Influencing Creation......Page 334
The Impact of Censorship......Page 335
Archival Landscape at Fort Hare......Page 336
Building Relationships between the University of Fort Hare and the University of Michigan......Page 337
Foreign and Domestic Engagement in Fort Hare's Archives......Page 339
The Larger South African Archival Scene......Page 340
"The Gift of One Generation to Another"......Page 344
Social History, Public Sphere, and National Narratives......Page 354
Writing the Nation as an Absence......Page 355
Imagining the Valencian Region in the Nineteenth Century......Page 357
Historical Imagination and an Open-Minded Past......Page 360
The Influence of Politics on the Shaping of the Memory of States in Western Europe (France)......Page 364
Archivists and Politicians: Methods of Action and Respective Responsibilities for the Constitution of Contemporary Memory......Page 365
In the Constitution of the Archival Fonds There Is the Need to Choose between the Person or the Function......Page 366
From Pragmatism to Law......Page 367
Should the Conservation Be Centralized? The Role of the State......Page 368
Switzerland in Wo rld War II......Page 372
Gold Tr ansactions......Page 373
The Role of the SFA in World War II-Related Issues in General......Page 374
The Discovery of Secret Card Indices and Files of the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor......Page 375
Summary......Page 376
Television Archives and the Making of Collective Memory......Page 379
PART V 
Archives and Social Understanding in States Undergoing Rapid Transition......Page 390
Producing Memory in Post-Defeat Japan......Page 393
The Political Origins of the National Diet Library......Page 395
An Apparatus for Collective Memory......Page 398
An Overview......Page 404
The National and University Library......Page 406
The Regional Museum......Page 407
The Archive of Bosnia-Herzegovina......Page 408
The Bosniak Institute......Page 410
Conclusion......Page 411
Writing Home in the Archive......Page 413
Anatolia in Athens: Private Archives, National Contexts......Page 414
Reading in the Archive Today......Page 415
Diaspora, Maps, Letters: Making a Home in Hellenism......Page 417
City, Buses, Notes: Memory Wo rk in Post-Civil War Athens......Page 419
Memory, Vo ice, Biography: Identifying the Refugee......Page 421
Archival Reflexiveness......Page 424
Qing Statesmen, Archivists, and Historians and the Question of Memory......Page 428
A Chinese Definition of Social Memory?......Page 429
A Manual of Qing Archival Policy......Page 430
Deliberate Forgetting......Page 433
Conclusion......Page 434
A Retrospective......Page 438
Availability and Publication of Archives......Page 442
Conclusion......Page 445
Archives and Histories in Twentieth-Century China......Page 447
Archives and Historical Writing......Page 454
The Politics of Access in Post-Soviet America......Page 462
The Request for Help......Page 463
A Wo rd about Money......Page 465
Selecting for Display......Page 466
What "History" Tells Us......Page 468
"Speaking Bolshevik" or Writing in Archivese?......Page 470
Laughing Bolshevik......Page 474
Ethnicity and Memory......Page 477
Intervening Contexts: Refashioning Ethnic Identities and Collective Memories......Page 479
Soviet Police Archives......Page 480
Post-Soviet Obstacles......Page 482
Archivists as "Persons Who Know How to Destroy"......Page 485
The Nationalist Right and Archival Memory in Post-Soviet Russia......Page 486
Is The Archival Reference Apparatus "Scientific"?......Page 491
Connections between the Apparatus of Scholarly Reference (SRA) and the General Schema of Historiography, Bibliography, and the O......Page 492
The Descriptive System in the Archival Reference Apparatus......Page 493
Archival Directories......Page 495
Conclusion......Page 498
The Problem of Determining Validity......Page 501
The Problem of Ethics......Page 504
The Typ ology of Sources on Investigations......Page 505
Contributors......Page 508
Back Cover
......Page 514