How Should Historians Respond in Their Work to the Knowledge that Archives Are Sites of Power - Essay Example

HOW SHOULD HISTORIANS RESPOND IN THEIR WORK TO THE KNOWLEDGE THAT ARCHIVES ARE SITES OF POWER AND CONTESTATION? Name Institution Professor Course Date Introduction An archive is a collection of chronological records or documents providing information about a group of people, institution or a place. It is a place where historical documents or public records are preserved. According to1, archives refer to a building, a symbol of a public establishment, which is one of the organs of an established state2. However, ‘archives’ is also viewed as a collection of documents, usually written documents, kept in this building. In the regard, the definition of archives must encompass both the building and the records stored in the building. The power and the status of the archive derive from the entanglement of documents and building. Therefore, the archive hold neither power nor status devoid of architectural dimension, which comprises of the physical space of the site of the building, its columns and motifs, the organisation of the files and the arrangement of the rooms among other things. Archives are the product of procedure, which converts a given number of documents into items to valuable keeping and preserving in a public place where they can be consulted with regard to well-established regulations, and procedure3. There is no political power devoid of the archive control4. This insistence in the relationship amid what counts as knowledge and who hold power has long been a founding colonial ethnography principle. For instance, the study of Haitian Revolution by Trouillot indicated that the historical narratives are premised on past understandings, which are premised in the archival power distribution. According to5, the archive is neither the sum of all texts that a given culture preserves nor those establishments that enable the record and preservation of archive. In this view, the archives, instead entails system of statements and those rules of practice that form the specific regularities of what cannot and can be said. Colonialism students have struggled with this formulation to capture what renders colonial archives both as exclusions documents and as monuments to certain power configurations. Blouin and Rosenberg (2007) locate archive as both ruin and relic, a repository of codified genres, beliefs for bearing witness, clustered links amid the law, power and secrecy. Archivists and historians approach past documentary differently. The historians focus on issues of identity, memory and power centred on the initial document inscription. According to6, archives are moulded in a way that naturalise the rule of winners of history. Historians argue that for an ethnographic perspective to archives, where scholars move from treating archives as transparent repositories of historical proof, to subjects that need to be thoroughly interrogated. Colonial archives, particularly, require to be read against the grains for their gaps and silence as well as along the grain to decipher and understand their prevailing logics, relations to the dominant establishments and modes of order7. Archives are developed on omissions and exclusions as the limits drawn around the preservation of some materials at the expense of others. The development of counter-archives developed to legitimize communities and histories. Archives focus on setting straight a historical record where some do so through contesting official knowledge, changing the burden to the users. Some archives set straight a historical record in celebration of retrieved content while others do so to protest against the suppression of history. Although archivists and historians share an interest in evidence and records, they consider archives in diverse ways. Both historians and archivists have started to create conceptual concepts of the archive as developed reality and to investigate ideas of archive as a site of contestation and a site for power around community and identity. Both sites for contestation and political power bring together scholars, historian and archivists from other similar disciplines to see the sights of shared understandings of the temperament of archives8. The temperament of archives is highly newsworthy as they change from the conventional text fixity to the multi-faceted digital objects fluidity. In the postmodern archival discourse, positivists’ concepts concerning the objective temperament of the record, as well as the neutral and impartial roles played by archivists in the preservation of archives are paving way to the investigation of processes of forgetting and remembering, exclusion and inclusion, and the power links they embody. In this sense, archives are depicted as political sites of contested knowledge and memory. According to9, there is no political power devoid of the control of the archive. Evidently, societies have utilised recordkeeping as an instrument of authority, power and governance and as a way of controlling their networks of relations. Archives are also used by societies to extend their control over distances of space and time. Archives are an allocative resource and an authoritative resource that informs the understanding of archives as sites for power and contestation10. Archives are essential to the engendering power and the knowledgeable management of an anticipated future and recollect of an elapsed past. Besides expressing prevailing power relations, archives are instruments of dominant power relations. An example of this is the South African apartheid. The apartheid archives system characterisation captures the essential quality of the system. The apartheid archive utilised its control over cultural and educational establishments to legitimise itself. These records mirrored the opinion of the white state and functioned to support its legitimacy claims11. The subsistence of diverse discourses in the South African apartheid and the dominance of one by modern archivists destroyed any false impression the post-apartheid successors might have held as the archive neutrality. To respond to the knowledge that archives are sites for power and sites for contestation, historians should use past events and justifiable theories. In the context of developing professional acceptance of the post-modern critique of archives as power and contestation sites, mainstream service providers have become receptive to a broader range of custodial models. The historians can also utilise the postmodern reflections that makes it apparent that archives are institutions that entails brandish power over the fiscal, legal and administrative accountability of individuals, corporations, governments and get involved in powerful debates about freedom of information, the right to know, privacy protection and intellectual property12. Modern cultural theorists approach and critique archives as sites of power that apply a perceived, naive belief in adherence to objectivity notwithstanding transparent gaps and absences amid collections. As loci of power of the present to control what the future will know of the past, archives are authoritative sites that can refute or substantiate historical accounts, reshape historical and collective memories that fade with the passing generations, hence their contestation. Historians manage the knowledge that archives are sites for contestation and power through oral history and reading with or against the grain. Oral history refers to the systematic collection of living person’s testimony that relates to their experiences. Through oral history, historians try to authenticate their findings, analyze them and position them in the most appropriate historical context. Oral historians focus on storage of their findings where an interviewee remembers an incident for an interviewer to record and develops a historical record. According to13, memory is the oral history core from which meaning can be extorted and preserved. Oral history collects personal commentaries and memories of historical importance via record interviews. An oral history interview comprises of a well-prepared interviewer who questions an interviewee. The exchange between interviewee and interviewers is then recorded in video or audio format. The recordings are transcribed, summarised and then positioned in archives or library. To prevent a repeat of common mistakes, oral historians have established standards for doing interviews and developed standards for dealing with their interviewees ethically. Documentary theatre positions historical truth as an embattled site of contestation. Historians establish a reflexive series of choreographic practices that frame oral accounts in a way that challenges mono-dimensional truth claims, making apparent the gap amid multiple factors of complex reality. For instance, the narration of the Arab Spring is a good example that depicts archives as site of contestation and power struggles. Another methodology that historians can use to respond to their knowledge of that archive are sites of power and contestation. Reading with the grain allows historians to seek to comprehend the point of view of official testimonies. Reading with the grain allows historians to understand the idea linked to the testimonies; and what the author intends to communicate. To respond to the knowledge that archives are sites of power and contestation, historians must come into terms with other people’s ideas and comprehend it thoroughly which calls for reading with the grain. With regard to reading against the grain, historians walk alongside side an author or other people’s writings and ideas; questions, explores and closely assess the ideas and points. The historians then look for contradictions, faulty logic and silences from the formal testimonies. Through reading against the grain, the reader does not look via the lens of the author, but instead tries on scores of other lenses. Historians question the ideas of other authors and become more critical towards an author through pointing out what is not right with the arguments of the author. Colonial archives need to be read against the grain. Historians must read official testimonies against the grain in order to ascertain their relationship with power and authority. Closer assessments of how archives are developed and the context through which documents contributes to historians treating archives as sites for power and contestation14. With respect to the social constructivism theory, historians consider archives as social constructs. This assertion is based on the social values and information needs of governments businesses, individuals, rulers and individuals who develop and maintain them. Notwithstanding shifts in the temperament of records, the application of past documents and the call to preserve them, have been about power, the power of the present to manage the archives, about upholding their power and what is known about the archives. The historians contend that no memory is attainable outside blueprints utilised by people in a society to retrieve and determine their recollections15. Archives according to historians are crucial components of such social rational frameworks. With respect to the social constructivism theory, re-creating or remembering the past via historical research is not merely the salvage of stored data, but the placing together of a claim regarding past states of affair through the structure of common cultural comprehension. According to historians, archives claim and shape cultural understanding16. The choice of what to be recorded and the choice over what to preserve is socially constructed. The strategies and principles adopted by archivists over time influence the character and composition of archival holdings17. The fundamental cultural structures are crucial to comprehending the temperament of archives as places and institutions of social memory. Such structures also impact archives at the creation level and the progressive survival of a single document18. Archives are not bearer of historical content, but also an expression of power and contestation. The temperament of archive hold serious upshots for administrative responsibility, historical knowledge and collective memory all of which are formed ingeniously by the naturalised, rarely questioned and largely invisible power of archives. Cultural theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault view archive as a major metaphorical construct through which to form their perspectives on human power, memory, knowledge and call for justice. Gane and Beer (2010) assert that Foucault’s interest in archives is principally a political one19. Foucault seeks to expose the laws via which particular ‘official’ bodies of historical happenings are admitted to archives while suppressed knowledge are excluded and them erased from memory. In short, Foucault views archives as sites of exclusion and inclusion through which historical memory is managed. He maintains that the issues of knowledge and power besides exclusion or inclusion are equally essential in putting into consideration archives today. However, in the modern world, archives are no longer sites for centralised control of historical material, but are formed through novel inequalities of access both to and via information communication technology. However, in the contemporary, Derrida and Foucault maintain that archives remain tied to powers of a state20. With regard to contestation, history is textured through archival blueprints. Therefore, contestation of histories also constitutes a contestation of the archive. Even if records developed by outsiders mirror the aspirations and expectations, beliefs and values of their creators, they comprise of essential part of the evidential systems for the nations to which they relate. Archives become a site of memory commemoration and production that enabled and reified the policies of colonial administration21. For instance, the Burma Rebellion that named the uprisings that erupted in the outlying districts of Rangoon in December 1930 was put in an archive consisting of a broad range of documents that including judicial records, legislative proceedings, memos, reports, newspaper clipping and official correspondence related to the rebellion22. The files concerning the rebellion continue to serve as the major evidential foundation for what people know of the resistance movement. These files serve as a neutral knowledge site. However, some scholars have started to question and reconsider how the Burma Rebellion files became part of historical record. Despite this contestation, commentators through application of Michel Foucault views have began to regard archive of the Burma Rebellion as expression of colonial authority and power. Closer evaluation of the manner in which archives are developed and the context in which documents are produced have contributed to treating of the archives as sites for power and contestation. The authors further assert that a closer look at archive shows that archives are not sites that are immune to moments of contestation, particularly with respect their memory-making ability23. Archives are sources for the reassertion of cultural identities and rights via the renegotiation of histories24. Conclusion Information and knowledge, as an upshot heritage, are viewed as strategic tools and resources. The way through which information is utilised and people involved in controlling it, is crucial. In this regard, the importance and nature of archive, as it reflects past historical constructs is a sought-after commodity. This makes historians to consider archives as tools of freedoms, surveillance, acquisitiveness, concealments, nationalism, trust, lies, desires, rights, ownership and propaganda. The major issue relating to archives according to historians is not about the sought-after information linked to the different archives, but how the information can be interpreted to suit the agenda of researchers, archivists, a nation and ordinary people. The archival rift amid archivists and historians is a deeply conceptual separation founded on diverse readings of the link between present and past, on how pasts can and should be figuratively and literally processed. The expanding conceptual parameters should be given to both the historians and archivists. Contestation over the temperament of sources, over the novel historical understanding of power and culture, and over the intricate issue of social memory is active in the production of specific forms of knowledge. Historian use oral history , reading with and against the grain to maintain archives are sites of contested memory and sites for power. Archives are sites of power and contestation because of the symbolic weight they carry in relation to the wider political and cultural projects of political and cultural activities. Archives are sites inundated by power and a dense, but, uneven knowledge body scarred by contestation. Reference List Blouin, F & Rosenberg, W 2007, Archives, documentation, and institutions of social memory: Essays from the Sawyer seminar, USA, University of Michigan Press. Derrida, J 1998, Archive fever: A Freudian impression, USA, University of Chicago. Dittmar, L & Entin, J 2016, ‘Introduction: Archives and radical education’, A social, Feminist, and Anti-racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching, vol 105, pp.1.6. Edwards, E 2016, Photography, anthropology and history: Expanding the frame, USA, Routledge. Gane, N & Beer, D 2008, New media: The key concepts, USA, Berg. Hamilton, C, Harris, V, Pickovr, M, Reid, G, Saleh, R & Taylor, J 2012, Refiguring the archive, UK, Springer Science & Business Media. McKemmish, S, Piggott, M, Reed, B, Upward, F 2005, Archives: Recordkeeping in society, USA, Elsevier. Menon, N & Nigam, A 2007, Power and contestation India since 1989, India: Zed Books. Morra, L 2014, Unarrested archives: Case studies in twentieth-century Canadian women’s authorship, Toronto, University of Toronto Press. Ritchie, D 2014, Doing oral history, UK, Oxford University Press. Roux, W 2007, Law, memory and the legal of Apartheid: Ten years after AZAPO V. President of South Africa, SA, PULP. Sabbagh, C & Schmitt, M 2016, Handbook of social justice theory and research, USA, Springer. Woon, K & Waterson, R 2012, Contestations of memory in Southeast Asia, India, NUS Press. Read More