of course, the particular approach from cultural studies is that it has a qualitatively different and more radical approach to such endeavors -- something from which, cultural studies folks generally argue, sociologists cannot overcome because it is mired in positivism and naive empiricism.
yadda
i am trying to remember the names of the sociologists who were big on working with archival material. of course, this is cultural studies so i'm pretty sure they will try to avoid any association with sociology -- either purposefully -- or will just avoid it because, as you and i have both noted, there's just no way on earth the most detail-oriented scholar can know everything.
anyway, i don't know details of archive theory but obviously they think that they can somehow weave together some kind of metanarrative
... DOROTHY SMITH! that's the name of one of the sociologists who reconstrctured gender oppression via archival materials. details escape at the moment...
anyway. where was i? oh yeah. Looks like they're trying to make some grand claim about the connection between things like a person who does scrapbooking to record their children's lives to a museum's archiving of, say, letters between local labor activists or among members of an arts community (whatever) or the way a newspaper archives its photographs.
Consider that an acquaintance as a closet full of old computer hardware and software. She can't bring herself to throw it out. It has little value to society, but the memories... That would be an archive of sorts. Complaining about all the junk in a recent movement, someone suggested that she videotape herself talking about the equipment and software and what it had meant to her. Now she has a video archive of the stuff, neatly stored away on a CD. It can be played over and over, and has an owners direct words about these objects.
Think of the difference between that videotape and what we've had before. Objects that would get ruined. Objects that appeared to have some meaning to owner, but for which we've rarely had a document explaining exactly what the meaning was.
So, now we think we have some kind of empirical final word on what the owner's meaning and intentions were abotu all of this stuff. But do we? She is now telling a story about software she owned ten years ago. What stake does she have in telling that story? How has time and memory fooled her. (I recently had this experience coming across an old momento box: the difference between my memory of a relationship; the story of the relationship as related in written communication; not to mention discrepancies between my memory and the other person's memory. :)
this reminds of a book review i read. the author pieces together, or rather encourages you to piece together, the story of a couple's romance and its demise. the pretense is that, upon splitting up, they've decided to auction off all their stuff. all of it is archived in the auction house's catalog. and that archiving -- the photograph of the object, the description, the notes, anything you can read from the object -- are the clues to piece together the story of the couple meeting, getting together, moving in, and then breaking up.
sounded pretty interesting.
yeah. blowing off the minutes waiting for the whistle to blow!
shag - back online -- carpet bomb!
> Until the following showed up in my inbox this morning I had never
> heard
> of either "archive theory" or "everyday life theory." The Call fwd
> below
> does contain a long section discussing what "the archive" is and what
> theory of it investigates. Is anyone on this list familiar with these
> topics? Any comment?
>
> Carrol
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: FW: [CultTheory]Archive and Everyday Life Conference
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 09:10:57 -0500
> From: Christopher Breu <cdbreu at ilstu.edu>
> Reply-To: Christopher Breu <cdbreu at ilstu.edu>
> To: ENGLISHTALK-L at LISTSERV.ilstu.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Subject: FW: [CultTheory]Archive and Everyday Life Conference Date:
> Thu,
> 28 May 2009 09:10:57 -0500 From: Christopher Breu <cdbreu at ilstu.edu>
> To:
> ENGLISHTALK-L at LISTSERV.ilstu.edu
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: g-csacont-admin at mcmaster.ca [
> mailto:g-csacont-admin at mcmaster.ca] On Behalf Of J.R. Pybus Sent:
> Thursday, May 28, 2009 8:40 AM To: g-csacont at mcmaster.ca Subject:
> [CultTheory]Archive and Everyday Life Conference
>
> Call for Proposals:
>
> "The Archive and Everyday Life" Conference May 7-8, 2010 McMaster
> University
>
> Confirmed Keynotes: Ann Cvetkovich (An Archive of Feelings: Trauma,
> Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures), Angela Grauerholz (At Work
> and
> Play: A Web Experimentation), Ben Highmore (The Everyday Life Reader;
> Everyday Life and Cultural Theory), Michael O'Driscoll (The Event of
> the
> Archive)
>
> This conference will bring together academics, advocates, artists, and
> other cultural workers to examine the intersecting fields of archive
> and
> everyday life theory. From Simmel through Mass Observation to
> contemporary Cultural Studies theorists, the objective of everyday
> life
> theory has been, as Ben Highmore writes, to "rescue the everyday from
> conventional habits of the mind.to attempt to register the everyday in
> all its complexities and contradictions." Archive theory provides a
> means to explore these structures by "making the unfamiliar familiar,"
> hence opening the possibility of generating "new forms of critical
> practice." The question of a politics of the archive is critical to
> the
> burgeoning field of archive theory. How do we begin to theorize the
> archive as a political apparatus? Can its effective democratization be
> measured by the participation of those who engage with both its
> constitution and its interpretation?
>
> "Archive" is understood to cover a range of objects, from a museum's
> collection to a personal photograph album, from a repository of a
> writer's papers in a library to an artist's installation of found
> objects. Regardless of its content, the archive works to contain,
> organize, represent, render intelligible, and produce narratives. The
> archive has often worked to legitimate the rule of those in power and
> to
> produce a historical narrative that presents class structure and power
> relations as both common-sense and inevitable. This function of the
> archive as a machine that produces History-telling us what is
> significant, valued, and worth preserving, and what isn't-is enabled
> through an understanding of the archive as neutral and objective (and
> too banal and boring to be political!). The archive has long occupied
> a
> privileged space in affirmative culture, and as a result, the archive
> has been revered from afar and aestheticized, but not understood as a
> potential object of critical practice.
>
> Can a dialogue between archive theory and everyday life theory work to
> "take revenge" on the archive (Cvetkovich)? If the archive works to
> produce historical narratives, can we seize the archive and its
> attendant collective consciousness as a tool for resistance in
> countering dominant History with resistant narratives? While the
> archive
> has worked to preserve a transcendental, "affirmative" form of
> culture,
> bringing everyday life theory into conversation with archive theory
> opens up the possibility of directing critical attention to both the
> wonders and drudgeries of the everyday. Archiving the
> everyday-revealing
> class structures and oppression on the basis of race and gender,
> rendering working and living conditions under global capitalism
> visible,
> audible, and intelligible-redirects us from our busyness and
> distractedness, and focuses our attention on that which has not been
> understood to be deserving of archiving. The archive provides the time
> and space to think through a collection of objects organized around
> particular set of interests. If the archive could grant us a space in
> which to examine everyday life, rather than sweeping it under the
> carpet
> as a trivial banality, we could begin to understand our conditions and
> develop the desire to change them.
>
> How can we envision the archive as a site of ethics and/or politics?
> Does the archive simply represent a place to amass memory, or can it,
> following Benjamin, represent a site to make visible a history of the
> present, thus amassing fragments of the everyday, which can in turn be
> used to uproot the authority of the past to question the present? In
> short, what happens when we move beyond the archive as merely a
> collection and begin to theorize it as a site of constant renewal and
> struggle within which the past and present can come together?
> Furthermore, how then does the archive as an everyday practice allow
> us
> to understand or change our perception of temporality, memory, and
> this
> historical moment?
>
> Areas of inquiry for submissions may include, but are not limited to,
> the following topics and questions:
>
> . The archive both includes and excludes; it works to preserve
> while simultaneously doing violence. Are the acts of selection,
> collection, ordering, systematizing, and cataloguing inherently
> violent?
> . The question of digitization: the internet as digital archive
> and the digitization of the physical archive. Digitizing the archive
> renders collections invisible and distant, yet increasingly searchable
> and quantifiable. Does the digitization of the archive reveal new ways
> of seeing persistent power structures? Or does it hide them? .
> National and colonial archiving: questions of power and national
> identity. . The utopian, radical potential of the archive as
> well
> as its dystopian possibilities. . Indigenous modes of archiving.
> . Visibility and pedagogy: while the archive often works to
> hide,
> conceal, and store away, it can also reveal and display that which
> otherwise remains invisible. Do barriers to access restrict this
> emancipatory function of the archive? . Questions of collective
> memory and nostalgia (for Benjamin, a retreat to a place of comfort
> through nostalgia is not a political act). . The archive as
> revisionist history. . The archive as a form of surveillance.
> . The role of reflexivity with respect to the manner in which
> the
> archive is onstructed/produced/curated. . Function of the
> narrative form for the archive: how does the way in which the archive
> reveals its own constructedness unravel the concept of the archive as
> "historical truth"? . The future of the archive: preservation
> and
> collection look forwards as well as into the past. How should we
> understand the hermeneutic function of the archive and the struggle
> over
> its interpretation? . The relationship between the archive and
> the
> archivist/archon. . Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the
> archive: who speaks and who is spoken for? . The affective
> relationship between the archive and the body.
>
>
> Following the conference, we intend to publish an edited collection of
> essays based on the papers presented at the conference to facilitate
> the
> circulation of ideas in this exciting field of inquiry.
>
>
> "The Archive and Everyday Life" Conference will take place 7-8 May,
> 2010, sponsored by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at
> McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (John Douglas Taylor Fund).
> The
> conference format will be diverse, including paper presentations,
> panels, round-table exchanges, artistic performances, and exhibitions.
> We encourage individual and collaborative paper and panel proposals
> from
> across the disciplines and from artists and community members.
>
> Paper Submissions should include (1) contact information; (2) a
> 300-500
> word abstract; and (3) a one page curriculum vitae or a brief bio.
>
> Panel Proposals should include (1) a cover sheet with contact
> information for chair and each panelist; (2) a one-page rationale
> explaining the relevance of the panel to the theme of the conference;
> (3) a 300 word abstract for each proposed paper; and (4) a one page
> curriculum vitae for each presenter. 
 Please submit individual
> paper proposals or full panel proposals via e-mail attachment by
> October
> 15, 2009 to tayconf at mcmaster.ca with the subject line "Archive."
> Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats. Submissions should be
> one
> document (i.e. include all required information in one attached
> document).
>
> Conference organizing committee: Mary O'Connor, Jennifer Pybus, and
> Sarah Blacker
>
> Website:
>
> http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~english/Taylor_2010/index.html
>
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