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?