The Art of Archives

UMass Boston || English 600 || Spring 2015 || Prof. Erin Anderson

Author: jiezhao001 (page 2 of 2)

Kaleidoscopic Fragments of the Primal History of the Dreamland

February 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Benjamin collects the glittering fragments from the arcades of history, the interminable corridor which seems to lead nowhere but still marching endlessly into an unknown distance. The Arcades Project unfolds itself as one charming topographic collections gathering the detritus of the ordinariness of the unremarkable day-to-day existence based on its own model of “dream interpretation”. (xi) Commentaries with varying lengths intersect with philosophical quotations from extensive sources.  A host of topics are arranged through the section of “Convolutes”, each opening a primary scene of the historical past. The passage of time has been frequented back and forth. The flashing images of the primal past are held in montage. Leafing through the seminal work of Benjamin just feels like browsing the “magic encyclopedia” with exquisite pictures signifying the passing moments of a splendid fairyland. (xi)

 

The first entry into the book offers many encounters with the monad-like flâneur, wandering his way around in the “phantasmagorical” scenes of Paris. The imprints he has left give the traces of a lost century, the bourgeoning of high capitalism engendering transformational changes in all the aspects. The objects of the history, once scattered over the historical space, have been rearranged in an attempt to restore the dead past into life. A grand scheme has been set up to awake the ancient time from its deep slumber. The “dialectical image” of works of a past time is “actualized” from the time it is “suddenly recognized”. (xii) The past is reinvented through the “interpenetration of images” of a primal history.

 

Through the “lost forms” of the past events, we, at the present, recognize our own. (458) We direct our gaze at the tales of peace and prosperity of a past age, only to find that there lurks the dangers of “retrograde tendencies” in the progressive course of history. (476) As a Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” has ever depicted, the angel of history, with his face turning toward the past, is propelled irresistibly by the storm called “progress” into the future to which his back is turned, only to see the pile of debris before him growing skyward. (Benjamin 80) The wreckage of the past catastrophe still keeps piling up while the present is crushed under the increasing heaviness and the future remains an unknown mystery, marked by the reverse progress.

 

Yet human beings have so much convinced themselves to believe that the redemptive power resides in the past, the place of divinity where the mythic power of salvation belongs. Every time when the harsh reality happens to violate the original project, men with a strong historical sense would revisit the glorious past by their time machine under the excuse of nostalgic wallowing. As the secret agreement between the past generation and the present one has justified the present existence, human beings have good reasons to seek their comfort from the generation precedes before them, from whom their weak Messianic power has derived. (Benjamin 77) It is not the past who demands its resurrection but the present who desperately cries out for it.

 

The archives of the primal past mirror the interior of the living time. When we knock on the door at the threshold and enter into the old times, we will often find the striking similitude between the past and the present. We navigate through all the possibilities in the past and take the high ground to justify the torment inflicted on our times. Indeed, the irreparable past comes to its second life as the comfort added to our own happiness at the present moment. The achieves are themselves the stepping stones to open up a new scene to confront the difficulties ahead. There, in the arcades of history, resides the redemptive power which brings forward the deepest part of ourselves.

Face to Face with the Ordinariness of a Remarkable Past

February 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The first entry into the Massachusetts State Archives offers one a brief glimpse into hundreds of thousands of packs of archives on the shelves, silently bathing in the glory as the witness of the old times. Breathing the “dust” of the archives of a past century, I have keenly felt the “drive” that pushes every historian to possess the very moment of a glittering past. (Steedman 1159) The temptation, awakening from the minute you intrude into a world which has been invested with the most ardent imagination, is so hard to resist. The “feverish desire” to “recover moments of inception, beginnings and origins” is rekindled with the intensive immersion with all these miraculous survivors of history. (Steedman 1160)

 

I opened the file documenting “Project Interact”, the one related to the ingenious interactive planning between regional vocational schools and community colleges in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Leafing through the yellow pages of the report, my thoughts were transferred to the days back in 1974 when the representatives of several schools were gathered for the sole purpose of studying “ways of articulating and coordinating programs and resources between regional vocational schools and community colleges” in the state of Massachusetts. (1-1) Certainly this is another official record which intends to inform the generation to follow the educational level of the former period. Another milestone in the history maybe. Like the pearl on the string, these highly remarkable events dotted the way of history. It strikes me suddenly to think about the past which, under the general agreement between each of us, seems to be decorated often with the most extravagant words. In the historical course dominated by the huge events, there seems little space for the ordinary. Their voices are drowned while their images are reduced to mere obscure shadows “anonymously submerged in history”. (Farge 92) By overlooking the ordinariness that makes up no small part in the historical past, we trick ourselves into believing that is all history is about.

 

Farge’s words in The Allure of the Archives have inspired many thoughts on me. One point she mentions provokes me to dwell my thinking on some related issues. The judicial archives of the eighteenth century, she argues, are the “accumulation of spoken words” whose authors “never intended to be authors”. (Farge 7) But there does exist a lot of archives which have ever been collected “with an eye toward history”. (Farge 7) As the former ones are most likely to reveal some truthfulness of a buried past, the latter may seem to be more susceptible to the impact of power and authority. The pleasure of expecting an encounter with the real past is completely destroyed in front of those which have been preserved for the very reason of leading our way through the path pre-designed. The exploration needs to be made on our side, not on theirs. We, navigating through all the possibilities of recovering a lost past, want badly to have an access to those archives like the judicial ones of the eighteenth century, which record the “rough traces of lives that never asked to be told in the way they were”. (Farge 6)

 

But the way of discovery is never meant to be easy. Archives can be intimidating sometimes. The huge packs of documents right in front of the eyes increases one’s anxiety over the tremendous job to decipher these records as well as to speak to the past. The distance between the archives and the historians can be tricky sometimes. If one becomes too “absorbed” with them, one loses the chance to “interrogate” the archives. (Farge 70) It is much wiser to keep a distance from the archives within a reasonable stretch to remain tolerably sober towards them. The truth is also hard to get. There is no way to assert the finality of an interpretation. The historical narrative is but a “construction”, “not a truthful discourse that can be verified on all of its points.” (Farge 95) As history itself is “endlessly incomplete”, there seems to exist some doubts about the reality of truthfulness that could ever be possessed by us. (Farge 98) But no matter how far the road can be, we are ever approaching the end of hopefulness although the days in the tunnel of darkness can be desperately struggling sometimes.

 

My imagination seems to run wild. The folder right before my eyes puts me on the track of the ordinary lives of an ancient past, remarkable as it is maybe. These fragments of history reveal to the readers the day-to-day existence of the ordinary, who intended the least to leave their own traces to a world that comes after. But as we read these files, the dead spirits of the ordinary seem to come to life again. There we find the very place where we can “bring about an exchange” with the “departed past” while “enter into unending conversation about humanity and forgetting, origins and death”. (Farge 124) It is the most intriguing encounter we can ever have with the lost past.

The Intimate Contact with a Lost Past

February 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The spirits of old times have been constantly conjured up to serve the needs of the present. Among the great number of archives of New York Public Library, there comes the one of Lydia Joel, the dancer, educator, editor, writer and producer, whose contribution to the development of the Department of the High School for the Performing Arts is, by no means, a small amount. The collection is catalogued in sever series: correspondence, personal papers concerning the private life of Lydia Joel, professional papers, dance subject files, clippings, photographs, and some oversized materials. The materials are thus selected in a way to offer the public a brief glimpse into the years from 1973 to 1984 during which the Deparment of the High School for the Performing Arts was on its upward period of extraordinary growth.

 

The past has increasingly become the one that we are all indebted in one way or another. It is the place where we can usually frequent for seeking the connection with the present. The act of documenting Lydia Joel itself testifies the fact that “a specific power and authority” has been exercised in the very process of archivization. (Mbembe 20) These documents of Lydia Joel bear their witness to a gloriou past that the author of the collection aspires to preserve. The way the archives has ever been institutionalized also reveals the logic that guides the selection and ordering of its components. Power has been authorized on the documents as information has been gathered around the very topic of the development of the High School of Performing Arts.

 

The statement that “knowledge is power” seems to unfold its truth when it comes to the specific circumstance of the preservation of archives which were chosen to fulfill its part of recording a distant past, though retreating from us in an enormous speed, from a wide range of materials. It may seem a little inappropriate to cite the example of the investigation of British colonial archives here to illustrate the logic behind the arrangement of the collection of Lydia Joel, however, this may prove helpful to probe into the feelings in control of the whole institution. “Recording and documenting the empire”, Thomas Richard argues, “was a way to bolster feelings of colonial power”. (Manoff 15) Organizing the files of Lydia Joel also serves to “formulate a story” of the past to which “we would all be heirs”—- it belongs exclusively to no one but to everybody who claims his “co-ownership” to it. (Mbembe 21) The collection thus echoes to a glittering past with which we, the generation of “the immediate present”, should all seek to form an emotional bond. (Mbembe 21) The attachment to a collective past no doubt strenthens the connection between members of the High School of Performing Arts while empowers the community with the proof of a shared past established with their concerted efforts.

 

Certainly there remains something to be obscured by the author of the collection. As Michael Lynch claims, “the archive is never ‘raw’ or ‘primary,’” because the documents have been rearranged “so as to lead later investigators in a particular direction.” (Manoff 16) Foucault gives his own definition of the archive as “the system of discursivity”, which “establishes the possibility of what can be said.” (Manoff 18) The policy of neutrality on which the collection is allegedly built seems to be “problematic” indeed, as Greethem argues that “we want to preserve the best of ourselves for those who follow”. (Manoff 20) If this is the case with the archives of Lydia Joel, the documents that have nothing to do with the “strenthening bond” between the faculty memebers of the High School of Performing Arts are no longer to be needed and thus left out as a result. Those who survived the test of time are also suspected of being invented to serve one purpose or another. We as the researchers of the immediate present “read for what is not there”, as Carolyn Steedman points out, while “the silences and the absence of the documents always speak to us.” (Manoff 16) We come as the refugees of history, only to find how feeble we are confronted with the irrepressible tide of all the historical records. If the archives are constantly susceptible to the influence of such a powerful design, how can we justify all the efforts put into the hard work of these collections? Is there still some possibility for the restoration of a lost past? How should we, as the generation of the present, preserve the archives for the generation to follow?

 

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