Abstract
This article traces an alternative to the evidence/memory dichotomy in archival discourse by highlighting the nexus between archival ideas about the nature, value, and use of records as viewed and imagined through the lens of an archival concept of evidence as a relation between record and event. This article then explores how “the archival nexus” provides a different framework for understanding the various meaning-making processes surrounding archives both within and outside the archival repository, and for rethinking the role of the archivist and the position of the archival discipline with regard to other disciplines that explicitly address and engage with the archive.
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Notes
For instance, in the case of the discourse on records as evidence, the emphasis on evidence to the exclusion of memory serves in part as a strategy for bolstering professional identity and influence, particularly in the realm of electronic records. Brien Brothman addresses this point in his critique of the extent to which records are coterminous with evidence in archival discourse (Brothman 2002, p. 312).
The Oxford English Dictionary defines arbiter as “one whose opinion or decision is authoritative in a matter of debate; a judge.” On a related note, the historical scholar Antoinette Burton raises the issue of the archive as arbiter when she writes about the scholarly need to engage “with the limits and possibilities of the archive as a site of knowledge production, an arbiter of truth, and a mechanism for shaping the narratives of history” (Burton 2005, p. 2).
The American Heritage Dictionary defines mediator as “a negotiator who acts as a link between parties.” One definition from the Oxford English Dictionary is “an intermediate agent; something which effects a transition between one stage or state and another.”
Geoffrey Yeo also explores the notion of evidence as a relation between two facts with regard to records (Yeo 2007, pp. 319–326).
The term “event” is broadly construed and refers to the thoughts, actions, deeds, etc. that gave rise to the records and the processes—whether cultural, social, technological, administrative, creative, etc.—from which the records stem.
Comparing the historical and sociological use of records, Stanley Raffel writes that “like historians…sociologists are using records in order to determine ‘what happened’, and like historians they are therefore relying on a relationship between record and event without explicating it.” (Raffel 1979, p. 6). He characterizes this relationship as one of “fact”, whereas I characterize it as one of “evidence.” From the historical-anthropological perspective, Nicholas Dirks touches upon the record-event relationship in his observation that the “archive is simultaneously the outcome of the historical process and the very condition for the production of historical knowledge” (Nicholas Dirks quoted in Ballantyne 2005, p. 103).
This challenge, I think, has implications for other disciplines and how they conceive of “archival evidence.”
Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg expand upon this idea, writing: “…the archive itself is not simply a reflection or an image of an event but also shapes the event, the phenomena of its origin. To put the matter somewhat differently, all archival records are not only themselves the product of social, cultural, and especially political processes; they very much affect the workings of these processes as well, and hence they influence the kinds of realities that archival collections reflect” (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006, p. 2).
According to Blouin and Rosenberg, “In any archive, a linkage must be made through the document to its point and context of origin…the linkage is necessarily an imaginary one in the sense that it can never be literal” (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006, p. ix).
Blouin and Rosenberg attribute the notion of “multivocality” to Laura Millar (Blouin and Rosenberg 2006, p. 167).
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Meehan, J. The archival nexus: rethinking the interplay of archival ideas about the nature, value, and use of records. Arch Sci 9, 157–164 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9107-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9107-0