In the “Exposes of 1935,” Benjamin writes,

The realization of dream elements, in the course of waking up, is the paradigm of dialectical thinking. Thus, dialectical thinking is the organ of historical awakening. Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening. It bears its end within itself and unfolds it—as Hegel already noticed—by cunning (5)

Here, I believe is where we see the crux of Benjamin’s project, encompassing his rules and aspirations alike: to create an organ of historical awakening by bearing its existence and its end within itself.

This process begins in the text that precedes the “Convolutes” with Benjamin’s conversation of the commodified objects of industrial capitalism. Particularly in the vying for separation of the industrial and the artistic, Benjamin notes the commodification of things in their transition from value-in-use to value-in-existence. He then uses this idea to reflect the capitalist commodification of people by juxtaposing the differentiation between the work sphere and the home sphere—a realm where one is useful, to the utopia of home, where one can collect the commodified art and all “things are free from the drudgery of being useful” (6). Benjamin writes that through the collection, “the irreal center makes its place in the home…the interior is the asylum of art [and] the collector is the true resident of the interior” (6). The ideas surrounding the privatization of the home, which come from the capitalist allowance of private ownership, are here displayed as commodified in itself; the home becomes an object of spectacle and uselessness that encompasses the collection and its collector. Benjamin carries the commodification of humans, by both themselves and others, to the idea of the archive writing, “‘The History of Civilization’…makes an inventory, point by point, of humanity’s life forms and creations” (14). So, not only has art and humanity been commodified by industrial capitalism, but the cycle continues with humanity’s urge to commodify their existence in and through the archive.

Benjamin then applies this idea of the commodification that has permeated humanity and society as a whole through the ideas of capitalism to the literary. Writing from the onset of globalization, Benjamin demonstrates the fragmented form of the Capitalist world in the organization and piecing of his text, while rejecting the commodification that it prescribes via the content of the text. Furthermore, he utilizes archiving—a practice that he has already equated with capitalist commodification—in inventorying texts that reject and/or challenge the social situation within which the practice of archiving thrives. Herein, he creates the organ, or the dialectic with which he hopes to promote historical awakening. By displaying the “convolutes” both in the form of—and using a method encompassed by—industrialized Capitalist society, Benjamin produces a dialectic that initiates a reflection on society by its members.

Considering the collection from the view of the dialectic in play, it seems as though the boundaries of the text collection—whether outright or discrete—are that it must continue the dialectic by providing content that in some way forces the reader to reflect back upon capitalist society. Furthermore, it must do so in orchestration using archiving–a commodifying act–alongside a form that resonates with Capitalist globalization. Within this dialectical presentation that encompasses the present state of Benjamin’s society and views alternate to that of the bourgeoisie middle class, is found the potentiality to awaken history to its alterability.

On Friday, I made my way to the Healey Library archival reading room. Having been there with the class, there was a feeling of familiarity and confidence that came with the visit. I knew to leave my things by the front desk and that my water bottle could certainly not come with me. I know if it would have been my first visit, much stumbling around and awkward confusion would have been involved, much like the amateurs of some of Farge’s vignettes.

I chose to look at the Lexington Oral History Projects. I knew from the finding aid that contained in the collection were oral histories from Vietnam veterans, but not many details beyond that. The one box that encompassed the collection was brought to me. The contents were as follows: 1 binder, 2 VHS, 2 folders, and 66 CDs. I started with the binder, wherein I discovered a much more intriguing story behind the collection than I had anticipated. In 1971, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, led by John Kerry, organized a march from Boston to Concord, stopping at a few locations to perform “guerrilla” theatre. When they reached Lexington, the veterans, along with many supporters from the community, filled the Lexington Battlegreen with plans to both perform and spend the night there. The city denied access, but veterans and protesters refused to leave, resulting in the arrest of 458 people. The collection of oral histories, gathered in the nineties, details the events leading up to and occurring that night.

Upon receiving the box from the archivist, and viewing the fresh DVDs and newly printed labels, I immediately began thinking about the physicality of this archive. Clearly, I wasn’t viewing the original collection of these oral histories, as this compilation had to have been put together within the last few years. This brought to mind questions of the relationship between the physical and the digital. With this collection, the accessibility of the digital archive (the recorded stories themselves) was placed above the physical archive of the stories’ original form—most likely VHS. In addition, not only were the contents of this collection physical copies of the originals, but there was no reference to where the originals were located. As the VHS will someday be a foreign item of the past, should they not be part of the archive as well, even if a new version has been made? It seemed to me that while the stories had been preserved in their digital format—preserving, to some extent, the story of the 1971 event—the event of the gathering of oral histories had been compromised. The ability to fully “breathe in” the dust of the collection in the full historical moment in which it was compiled was gone. A giant piece of the physical collection agent was missing from this collection without any trace as to where it could be found.

While something was lost in the prizing of the digital files of this collection over the physical, a page in the binder noted that an identical collection could be found at the Joiner Center. Although this still presents the loss of the original mechanism, it does reflect the flexibility of the digital archive to escape the “one-of-a-kind-at-one-place” quality that most of the other collections carry.

Moving on to the actual oral histories, knowing that I would barely be able to scratch the surface of the 66 stories in a few hours, I chose three very different interviewees: a Vietnam vet, a journalist, and the judge that presided over the 458 cases of arrest that night. The most striking thing about these stories, besides their varying and powerful perspectives, was the way in which the interviewers controlled the story. While the interviewees wore willingness to tell their stories on their faces, only details were given where details were asked. In this way—and in terms of most oral histories as well—it is the interviewers more than the “magistrate,” as Derrida claims, and the historian, as Steedman seems to believe, who truly hold the power over what is in the archive and what is not.

In addition to the swaying of the interviewers’ questions in the directing and limiting of the story of this archive, time passed and the extent of the digital file also limit the narrative of the event being discussed. In terms of the influences of time passed, all interviewees, at some point espoused that they “can’t remember why” something happened that day, or who was there, etc. Furthermore, many of those present that day have since passed away, continuing the inability of this collection to tell the entire story. Farge writes, “Words carry their present with them, and they tell us of the way things were recognized and differentiated” (82). Considering this, we can also see the limitation of time in the event of the spoken words of the interviewees, who produce from twenty or more years after the event being spoken of. The limitation of the digital file (what has been captured) itself can also be found in these oral histories. Upon starting the interview with the journalist, Emily Frankovich, one finds herself in the midst of a story she’s sharing with the interviewers before the formal collection of the story begins. This demonstrates not only the limitation of the archive to tell the story of the event being discussed, but also the limits of the archive to tell the story of the project itself.

As both Steedman and Farge impress, this archive is an instance of clear incompleteness of a collection, showing that the archive, and thus the history made from it, can never fully encompass the event.

Kim Noble is a fifty-three-year-old woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder.) Fourteen of her twenty personalities are phenomenal artists, all displaying vastly different and extremely unique artistic tendencies, preferences and techniques. The collection can be viewed here, where pieces are organized in alphabetical order under the personality name to which they belong. Once categorized under their respective personality names, there seems to be no visible method of arrangement, as the pieces are not presented in any chronological or chromatic order, which leads me to assume that it is preference that guides the arrangement. In the case of displaying the collections at live shows, samples from each artist’s work are shown, but the pieces remain with others from the same personality. This works to maintain the great distinction between Noble’s artistic personalities so that viewers don’t mistake the same style as coming from more than one personality.

Understanding that each personality’s style is distinct from the other is all one needs to do in order to easily group the paintings. Abi, for example, paints delicately, illustrating a monochromatic background with a single subject that consumes only an eighth of the painting and entitles the works with short phrases describing the every-day things that the subject is doing or being. Anon, however, paints with heavy, oil-based paints, illustrating ghostly figures and applying mysterious and dark titles involving “the edge.” Much different still is Key, who paints cryptic tribal graphics and geometric designs on boxes covered in black cloth.

Key’s art in particular illustrates that the collections of Noble’s artistic personalities are not limited to canvas, but do seem to be exclusionary of art forms outside of painting/illustration. With Key’s diversion from the rest of the collections, however, it does not eliminate the possibility of Noble developing a 15^th artistic personality that prefers sculpting or wood-carving, etc.

The very clear divisions between each personality’s collections, however, does seem to limit each artist to a particular medium and specific style. It is here that the possibility of something silenced arises. When Achille Mbembe’s discussion of the archival building, wherein he writes, “The archive has neither status nor power without an architectural dimension,” (19)  is applied to the world of digitized archives, the framework of the collections and unifying/separating characteristics can be seen as the walls and the structure without which the archive loses its power. In the case of artists without Dissociative Identity Disorder, it is not uncommon to see creative nature expressed in many forms and through many mediums. Why, then, can we suppose that Noble’s personalities are extremely distinct in their artistic expression? Or, is it likely that outlier pieces from each personality have been suppressed in order for the “walls” and power of the collection to stand? If this is the opinion taken, (which I am inclined toward) is it Derrida’s “archival fever” (12) or the potential power in manipulating the archives that Mbembe describes that truly works in contradiction to the anarchival “death drive” (which here has not prevailed)? Or, is the “archive fever” inclusionary of the construing power that comes with archives?