“What sealed the historical reputation of Bakunin and his family, however, was that his planned ‘revolution against things’ never succeeded and his family’s archive survived. A gargantuan collection that helped form the empirical spine of Russian intellectual history, the Bakunin archive has supported the careers of generations of scholars and historians and inspired many novelists as well” (Randolph 210).
The passage was from the chapter I chose for this week, which was about the Bakunin family archives. While a family’s personal archives may be different from national archives, this passage seemed like it paralleled other things we read pretty well, with the added nuance that there is a spectrum of importance in terms of preserving things. Other pieces we’ve read have discussed how governments could destroy certain documents, mark others secret like in Dutch colonized Indonesia, or destroy the records of certain rulers, like during some empires in China. This passage from this piece made me think about how if we don’t get certain pieces because they’re deemed too important, and don’t get others because they aren’t important enough, what we really have is what people deemed… boring? Or like middle-of-the-road important. It was really interesting to think about how archives are cultivated, but not for the cream of the crop. Furthermore, the other pieces also pointed out how even if systems in power hid or destroyed certain documents, we have a tendency to try and find those, despite the fact that they may have only been important in context or in the moment.
Going forward, is it important that we find the “most important,” and if not, how do we stop our curiosity? What do we make of having only the medium information?
“Archiving is not about history looking backward, but about storing and securing for the future. Archiving–all the activities from creation and management to the use of records and archives–has always been directed towards transmitting human activity and experience through time and, secondly, through space…Archives can, however, only have the power of a time machine if the information has been stored some way, some where” (Ketelaar 233).
The idea of archives as there to store and secure information for the future seems powerful. But to say that archiving is not about history looking backward seems a bit controversial, and a bit too much. Isn’t the whole point of using an archive to find out what happened in the past? We have to look backward (and do so for a good while) before we can look forward. In class, we have considered a number of readings that reflect on issues far in the past as well as readings that reflect on issues of our current time, like the role of liberal arts colleges. Whether talking about colonization, or student protests of the late 60s, or the role of archivists in standing up to college administrations, we are combining the practice of looking backward with the exercise of using that information to look forward. That is to say, the use of information from the archive is more nuanced than Ketelaar portrays it to be.
I feel like there’s sometimes stigma attached to studying history–the kind of statement someone makes about how it’s just useless to memorize a bunch of names and dates. Ketelaar’s article seemed to me to counter that in strong ways. Should archival education (in theory and in practice) be a part of traditional history curriculums before college?
Hey Noa,
I’ve often thought about this question. I would have to say yes, archival education needs to be part of history curriculums. I say this because when I arrived at Colby I felt really unprepared when it came to finding information for writing papers. If I had studied archival research more growing up, I don’t think I’d have as big of a problem. I also feel that a lot of people growing up taking history classes are turned off from history because they don’t get the real impacts studying history can have. I think studying the archives could help with this.
“The result is that oral tradition, which necessarily circulates between individuals and generations, is, for the purposes of the court, invalid.” (Perry, 334)
A dominate culture has immense power to put systems in place that benefit them and undermine marginalized cultures. The hearsay rule completely invalidates the truths and history of some cultures and community. Rules such as this only support a culture of written and amassed storage of facts. Even though the British records indicated nothing of the Natives releasing their land to the whites, without anything from their side that says differently they are lack evidence. The politics of assigning power to a specific type of archive really does allow a complete shift of power.
Do we have a responsibility to at least attempt to translate all interacting archives onto a singular format so they cannot be used against each other?
Hi Will,
This is an interesting question. I think the best solution would be to at least make sure everything is documented in a way that will allow future historians to look back and understand what is being said and the context of the story. This also makes me wonder how oral traditions are often archived…whether or not they are physically documented versus being perhaps recorded. The documentation would definitely experience a loss since there may be aspects unique to how the story is told.
“In the eighteenth century, for example, the French introduced
the police state with the lettres de cachet (in other words: records) that
once issued by royal edit confined the subject to house arrest or worse. The
records were as powerful as the prison. ” (Ketelaar, 227)
First off, this article takes the cake for best introduction, I mean who doesn’t love Star Wars.
I think the quote I chose really reflects the power of the archives. The police state is something that couldn’t be possible without constant surveillance and record keeping. Prior to the systematic keeping of records there was no way for the government to have the same level of power over its citizens. It just wasn’t possible, there was no way to keep track of people’s offenses and records. The article shows this point by talking about the history of the police records, talking about how the French were the first to keep a system of records of what its citizens had done. That’s why during the French Revolution when the people stormed the Bastille they not only demanded the freedom of the prisoners they also demanded the destruction of all the records. Not only were the bars keeping people prisoner, so were the records.
The French Revolutionaries are probably rolling over in their graves thinking about the level of record keeping today. Every single offense in our country is put on a record, which is then stored systemically and follows a person for the rest of their lives. Records have absolutely consumed every aspect of our lives, from school to criminal records. Every single action someone carries out is carefully recorded.
Question- What’s and example of a system of records that needs to stay in place and then what is an example of a system of records that needs to be abolished?
“The TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] also articulated the idea that memory is not just carried by individuals but that institutional memory too is contained in countless documentary records. This is the purview of the archives.” (full citation at bottom)
This is a pretty interesting example of the epistemological effects of the TRC’s work (if you’re like me and don’t know that much about South African history, the chapter from which I pulled this quote is a great place to start) in that it paints the TRC as an actor that is responsible for changing a culture of knowledge. Elsewhere in this chapter, Pohlandt-Mccormick talked about how the TRC had also recognized the bias (and oftentimes, by international law, illegal) inherent in the previous government’s archives and took steps to incorporate Black South Africans into the archival tradition. In this quote, however, Pohlandt-Mccormick kicks off an analysis of that same biased, morally bankrupt archive and how it can be used to seek justice, inasmuch as the “purview of the archives” is such that it buttresses institutional history. Indeed, after having poured through innumerable documents, reports, letters, and accounts, the author also analyzes the government of South Africa as an entity with its own story and memories, not simply as an oppressor. By recognizing the agency of the South African government (but also by taking lurid steps so as to not compromise its moral culpability for Apartheid), Pohlandt-Mccormick literally uncovers a new narrative that in and of itself is the repository of millions.
Question: Can treating large entities as moral actors capable of memory and forethought work in fields other than national histories? What about the history of a college, a business, or a charity? Is there any inherent reason why Pohlandt-Mccormick’s methodology wouldn’t work in these cases?
Helena Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2005. “In Good Hands: Researching the 1976 Soweto Uprising in the State Archives of South Africa”, Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, pg 314, Antoinette Burton
“Politics, political history, the history of individual people and events…could only be understood in their conjectural relationship to slower, deeper patters of societal evolution: humanity in relation to its surroundings” (Blouin 8).
Now that archivists have solidified how to identify biases and effects to be had on archival research, they are trying to find a way to process the loads of information coming into the archives. One idea, called the Annales Critique, arose during this time in an effort to efficiently swift through the mass of information. The main argument surrounding this idea was that archivists should only focus on the broader picture that better relates to the overall evolution of humanity. This is opposed to the current practice in which minuscule and seemingly unimportant details will be recorded. The argument behind this theory is that by looking at the archives in this way, a historian can uncover a broader perspective into the human patterns that are developing and changing over time.
Question:
When the author says that small details will be taken out of the picture, what does this mean? Would the majority of personal archives be disregarded since they are only specific snapshots of time? How can that broader picture be captured and what archives would an archivist choose to represent it?
Quote: “This is as it should be: open and accountable government, with reliable records, empowering vigilant citizens to exercise their civil rights: ‘Archives of the people, by the people, for the people.’ Unfortunately, however, reality is often quite different. Records are, indeed, both ‘enablers of democratic empowerment’ and ‘instruments of oppression and domination,’ as Adrian Cunningham suggests.” – Ketelaar (4)
Comment: We’ve been grappling with the question of “what now?” a lot in the past week, and it can’t help but come back again even with the envisioned goal of “open and accountable government.” The concept of “ ‘Archives of the people, by the people, for the people’” is obviously admirable and ideal, but practically, what does that look like? Should archives be separated from political institutions? Should archives be separated from the people who are archived in them? Going back to the question of separating archives from political institutions, the feeling of that need to separate archives from the government is quite revealing in terms of relationships between people and the government. To pick up Ketelaar’s Star Wars references, the problem that Obi-Wan faces, the malicious entity Obi-Wan is opposed by, is not the archives, but the corrupt leaders of the empire.
Question: Is the question of archive use and authenticity ultimately an indicator of problems elsewhere in institutions, and a call to reevaluate relationships with those institutions?
Quote: “In all totalitarian systems – public and private – records are used as instruments of power, of extreme surveillance, oppression, torture, murder. The records themselves are dumb, but without them the oppressor is powerless (Ketelaar 226)”
Comment: It seems that totalitarian regimes gain their power through the panoptical nature of the archive; the regime sees all and therefore knows all. That’s why these regimes so meticulously maintain all their records. The section explaining how archivists would forge marriages between Christians and Jews in Nazi Germany reminded me of the way colonial Spaniards were obsessed with consulting their archival documents to determine if they had “limpieza de sangre.” The archive is all-powerful; the records held in the archive determined not just the past, but both the present and future of the individuals who consulted them in these regimes.
Question: Ketelaar criticizes the security measures that archivists are forced to endure before they can see documents. Do you think these measures are unfair or in the best interest of preserving the documents?
“In the United States, historical societies and early state archives played
a similar role. Both used historical authorities in determining which
materials were to be preserved, how they were to be catalogued, and
hence how the nation’s past and purpose were to be understood.
Their historical documentation was assembled to authenticate
historical narration.”
It is funny that as soon as legibility becomes somewhat of a common ability among commoners, that knowledge and legacy were used as a tool. Of course, governments and leaders have been keeping archives for millennia in order to serve their purpose, but the archival revolution seen at the end of the 19th century is unusual. With the rise of the concise, strict borders that now define our nation-states, there became incentive to create a sense of patriotism. Allowing government’s a more content population to keep under control, it could focus on whatever agenda it was going after. Additionally, there is nothing inherently wrong with patriotism, making it the perfect way to increase control over a society. Humans process the past via a narrative. There are not too many of us capable of knowing only facts of a situation and do not try and connect the dots in a logical fashion. Of course governments will try to fix this narrative to their liking, but that increases the burden of any researching combing through their archival documents.
Why was the United States late to the game in updating their documentation process? Was it the fracturing of the states that kept a federal process from ever realizing, or some other influence?
Like Jon, I read Helena Pohlandt-Mccormick’s piece on South Africa.
“…social or publicly sanctioned memories and histories were shaped around
silences and lies” (Pohlandt-Mccormick 300).
This piece reminds me of one of the articles from yesterday about having the historian or author discuss their time in the archives as an important part of their research and to include it within the text. Pohlandt-Mccormick doesn’t try to separate herself from her research.
I’m not sure I have a completed thought here, but I’m curious about her discussion of researching through the years when the pace of history happening around her seemed to be speeding up. Does a sense of a quickening pace of history make us more careless in our attempts to document history? Or more careful? Or perhaps more cautious of the recording of our mistakes or downfalls?
And her final point in her concluding paragraph harks back to one of the central themes of our course: archives themselves are not necessarily havens of truth or safety for historical items. They are relative to the individuals who help run them.
Qoute: “The message conveyed by these and many other Spanish American writers is the same as Quevedo’s and Monterroso’s: the notary is a powerful, consequential actor you cannot afford to ignore. Be sure to get him on your side if you can.”
Comment: I find this qoute interesting because it summmarizes the sentiment of a number of direct sources from early colonial America that the Blouinchapter includes. It seems to me the power of the notary and written documents has been at the forefront of our human consciousness for longer than I had thought prior to reading this.
Question: what are some tactics for archivists to reduce their own subjectivity when archiving documents?
“The heroic logic of the first was premised on what Francis Fukuyama would later describe as the ‘end of history’ in the sense that the world’s struggle for stability and order would eventually come to a successful and triumphant (liberal) end.” Blouin pg. 71
Fukuyama’s famous international relations theory states that with the rise of liberal democracies across the world, comes an impending end of history. The theorist backs up this claim with the liberal ideologic “Democratic Peace Theory.” This theory states that democratic countries do not go to war with other democratic countries. Do you think this kind of “end of history” could ever be possible? Do you believe that our world will eventually come to be made up of only liberal democracies?
“What sealed the historical reputation of Bakunin and his family, however, was that his planned ‘revolution against things’ never succeeded and his family’s archive survived. A gargantuan collection that helped form the empirical spine of Russian intellectual history, the Bakunin archive has supported the careers of generations of scholars and historians and inspired many novelists as well” (Randolph 210).
The passage was from the chapter I chose for this week, which was about the Bakunin family archives. While a family’s personal archives may be different from national archives, this passage seemed like it paralleled other things we read pretty well, with the added nuance that there is a spectrum of importance in terms of preserving things. Other pieces we’ve read have discussed how governments could destroy certain documents, mark others secret like in Dutch colonized Indonesia, or destroy the records of certain rulers, like during some empires in China. This passage from this piece made me think about how if we don’t get certain pieces because they’re deemed too important, and don’t get others because they aren’t important enough, what we really have is what people deemed… boring? Or like middle-of-the-road important. It was really interesting to think about how archives are cultivated, but not for the cream of the crop. Furthermore, the other pieces also pointed out how even if systems in power hid or destroyed certain documents, we have a tendency to try and find those, despite the fact that they may have only been important in context or in the moment.
Going forward, is it important that we find the “most important,” and if not, how do we stop our curiosity? What do we make of having only the medium information?
“Archiving is not about history looking backward, but about storing and securing for the future. Archiving–all the activities from creation and management to the use of records and archives–has always been directed towards transmitting human activity and experience through time and, secondly, through space…Archives can, however, only have the power of a time machine if the information has been stored some way, some where” (Ketelaar 233).
The idea of archives as there to store and secure information for the future seems powerful. But to say that archiving is not about history looking backward seems a bit controversial, and a bit too much. Isn’t the whole point of using an archive to find out what happened in the past? We have to look backward (and do so for a good while) before we can look forward. In class, we have considered a number of readings that reflect on issues far in the past as well as readings that reflect on issues of our current time, like the role of liberal arts colleges. Whether talking about colonization, or student protests of the late 60s, or the role of archivists in standing up to college administrations, we are combining the practice of looking backward with the exercise of using that information to look forward. That is to say, the use of information from the archive is more nuanced than Ketelaar portrays it to be.
I feel like there’s sometimes stigma attached to studying history–the kind of statement someone makes about how it’s just useless to memorize a bunch of names and dates. Ketelaar’s article seemed to me to counter that in strong ways. Should archival education (in theory and in practice) be a part of traditional history curriculums before college?
Hey Noa,
I’ve often thought about this question. I would have to say yes, archival education needs to be part of history curriculums. I say this because when I arrived at Colby I felt really unprepared when it came to finding information for writing papers. If I had studied archival research more growing up, I don’t think I’d have as big of a problem. I also feel that a lot of people growing up taking history classes are turned off from history because they don’t get the real impacts studying history can have. I think studying the archives could help with this.
“The result is that oral tradition, which necessarily circulates between individuals and generations, is, for the purposes of the court, invalid.” (Perry, 334)
A dominate culture has immense power to put systems in place that benefit them and undermine marginalized cultures. The hearsay rule completely invalidates the truths and history of some cultures and community. Rules such as this only support a culture of written and amassed storage of facts. Even though the British records indicated nothing of the Natives releasing their land to the whites, without anything from their side that says differently they are lack evidence. The politics of assigning power to a specific type of archive really does allow a complete shift of power.
Do we have a responsibility to at least attempt to translate all interacting archives onto a singular format so they cannot be used against each other?
Hi Will,
This is an interesting question. I think the best solution would be to at least make sure everything is documented in a way that will allow future historians to look back and understand what is being said and the context of the story. This also makes me wonder how oral traditions are often archived…whether or not they are physically documented versus being perhaps recorded. The documentation would definitely experience a loss since there may be aspects unique to how the story is told.
“In the eighteenth century, for example, the French introduced
the police state with the lettres de cachet (in other words: records) that
once issued by royal edit confined the subject to house arrest or worse. The
records were as powerful as the prison. ” (Ketelaar, 227)
First off, this article takes the cake for best introduction, I mean who doesn’t love Star Wars.
I think the quote I chose really reflects the power of the archives. The police state is something that couldn’t be possible without constant surveillance and record keeping. Prior to the systematic keeping of records there was no way for the government to have the same level of power over its citizens. It just wasn’t possible, there was no way to keep track of people’s offenses and records. The article shows this point by talking about the history of the police records, talking about how the French were the first to keep a system of records of what its citizens had done. That’s why during the French Revolution when the people stormed the Bastille they not only demanded the freedom of the prisoners they also demanded the destruction of all the records. Not only were the bars keeping people prisoner, so were the records.
The French Revolutionaries are probably rolling over in their graves thinking about the level of record keeping today. Every single offense in our country is put on a record, which is then stored systemically and follows a person for the rest of their lives. Records have absolutely consumed every aspect of our lives, from school to criminal records. Every single action someone carries out is carefully recorded.
Question- What’s and example of a system of records that needs to stay in place and then what is an example of a system of records that needs to be abolished?
“The TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission] also articulated the idea that memory is not just carried by individuals but that institutional memory too is contained in countless documentary records. This is the purview of the archives.” (full citation at bottom)
This is a pretty interesting example of the epistemological effects of the TRC’s work (if you’re like me and don’t know that much about South African history, the chapter from which I pulled this quote is a great place to start) in that it paints the TRC as an actor that is responsible for changing a culture of knowledge. Elsewhere in this chapter, Pohlandt-Mccormick talked about how the TRC had also recognized the bias (and oftentimes, by international law, illegal) inherent in the previous government’s archives and took steps to incorporate Black South Africans into the archival tradition. In this quote, however, Pohlandt-Mccormick kicks off an analysis of that same biased, morally bankrupt archive and how it can be used to seek justice, inasmuch as the “purview of the archives” is such that it buttresses institutional history. Indeed, after having poured through innumerable documents, reports, letters, and accounts, the author also analyzes the government of South Africa as an entity with its own story and memories, not simply as an oppressor. By recognizing the agency of the South African government (but also by taking lurid steps so as to not compromise its moral culpability for Apartheid), Pohlandt-Mccormick literally uncovers a new narrative that in and of itself is the repository of millions.
Question: Can treating large entities as moral actors capable of memory and forethought work in fields other than national histories? What about the history of a college, a business, or a charity? Is there any inherent reason why Pohlandt-Mccormick’s methodology wouldn’t work in these cases?
Helena Pohlandt-Mccormick, 2005. “In Good Hands: Researching the 1976 Soweto Uprising in the State Archives of South Africa”, Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, pg 314, Antoinette Burton
“Politics, political history, the history of individual people and events…could only be understood in their conjectural relationship to slower, deeper patters of societal evolution: humanity in relation to its surroundings” (Blouin 8).
Now that archivists have solidified how to identify biases and effects to be had on archival research, they are trying to find a way to process the loads of information coming into the archives. One idea, called the Annales Critique, arose during this time in an effort to efficiently swift through the mass of information. The main argument surrounding this idea was that archivists should only focus on the broader picture that better relates to the overall evolution of humanity. This is opposed to the current practice in which minuscule and seemingly unimportant details will be recorded. The argument behind this theory is that by looking at the archives in this way, a historian can uncover a broader perspective into the human patterns that are developing and changing over time.
Question:
When the author says that small details will be taken out of the picture, what does this mean? Would the majority of personal archives be disregarded since they are only specific snapshots of time? How can that broader picture be captured and what archives would an archivist choose to represent it?
Quote: “This is as it should be: open and accountable government, with reliable records, empowering vigilant citizens to exercise their civil rights: ‘Archives of the people, by the people, for the people.’ Unfortunately, however, reality is often quite different. Records are, indeed, both ‘enablers of democratic empowerment’ and ‘instruments of oppression and domination,’ as Adrian Cunningham suggests.” – Ketelaar (4)
Comment: We’ve been grappling with the question of “what now?” a lot in the past week, and it can’t help but come back again even with the envisioned goal of “open and accountable government.” The concept of “ ‘Archives of the people, by the people, for the people’” is obviously admirable and ideal, but practically, what does that look like? Should archives be separated from political institutions? Should archives be separated from the people who are archived in them? Going back to the question of separating archives from political institutions, the feeling of that need to separate archives from the government is quite revealing in terms of relationships between people and the government. To pick up Ketelaar’s Star Wars references, the problem that Obi-Wan faces, the malicious entity Obi-Wan is opposed by, is not the archives, but the corrupt leaders of the empire.
Question: Is the question of archive use and authenticity ultimately an indicator of problems elsewhere in institutions, and a call to reevaluate relationships with those institutions?
Quote: “In all totalitarian systems – public and private – records are used as instruments of power, of extreme surveillance, oppression, torture, murder. The records themselves are dumb, but without them the oppressor is powerless (Ketelaar 226)”
Comment: It seems that totalitarian regimes gain their power through the panoptical nature of the archive; the regime sees all and therefore knows all. That’s why these regimes so meticulously maintain all their records. The section explaining how archivists would forge marriages between Christians and Jews in Nazi Germany reminded me of the way colonial Spaniards were obsessed with consulting their archival documents to determine if they had “limpieza de sangre.” The archive is all-powerful; the records held in the archive determined not just the past, but both the present and future of the individuals who consulted them in these regimes.
Question: Ketelaar criticizes the security measures that archivists are forced to endure before they can see documents. Do you think these measures are unfair or in the best interest of preserving the documents?
“In the United States, historical societies and early state archives played
a similar role. Both used historical authorities in determining which
materials were to be preserved, how they were to be catalogued, and
hence how the nation’s past and purpose were to be understood.
Their historical documentation was assembled to authenticate
historical narration.”
It is funny that as soon as legibility becomes somewhat of a common ability among commoners, that knowledge and legacy were used as a tool. Of course, governments and leaders have been keeping archives for millennia in order to serve their purpose, but the archival revolution seen at the end of the 19th century is unusual. With the rise of the concise, strict borders that now define our nation-states, there became incentive to create a sense of patriotism. Allowing government’s a more content population to keep under control, it could focus on whatever agenda it was going after. Additionally, there is nothing inherently wrong with patriotism, making it the perfect way to increase control over a society. Humans process the past via a narrative. There are not too many of us capable of knowing only facts of a situation and do not try and connect the dots in a logical fashion. Of course governments will try to fix this narrative to their liking, but that increases the burden of any researching combing through their archival documents.
Why was the United States late to the game in updating their documentation process? Was it the fracturing of the states that kept a federal process from ever realizing, or some other influence?
Like Jon, I read Helena Pohlandt-Mccormick’s piece on South Africa.
“…social or publicly sanctioned memories and histories were shaped around
silences and lies” (Pohlandt-Mccormick 300).
This piece reminds me of one of the articles from yesterday about having the historian or author discuss their time in the archives as an important part of their research and to include it within the text. Pohlandt-Mccormick doesn’t try to separate herself from her research.
I’m not sure I have a completed thought here, but I’m curious about her discussion of researching through the years when the pace of history happening around her seemed to be speeding up. Does a sense of a quickening pace of history make us more careless in our attempts to document history? Or more careful? Or perhaps more cautious of the recording of our mistakes or downfalls?
And her final point in her concluding paragraph harks back to one of the central themes of our course: archives themselves are not necessarily havens of truth or safety for historical items. They are relative to the individuals who help run them.
Qoute: “The message conveyed by these and many other Spanish American writers is the same as Quevedo’s and Monterroso’s: the notary is a powerful, consequential actor you cannot afford to ignore. Be sure to get him on your side if you can.”
Comment: I find this qoute interesting because it summmarizes the sentiment of a number of direct sources from early colonial America that the Blouinchapter includes. It seems to me the power of the notary and written documents has been at the forefront of our human consciousness for longer than I had thought prior to reading this.
Question: what are some tactics for archivists to reduce their own subjectivity when archiving documents?
“The heroic logic of the first was premised on what Francis Fukuyama would later describe as the ‘end of history’ in the sense that the world’s struggle for stability and order would eventually come to a successful and triumphant (liberal) end.” Blouin pg. 71
Fukuyama’s famous international relations theory states that with the rise of liberal democracies across the world, comes an impending end of history. The theorist backs up this claim with the liberal ideologic “Democratic Peace Theory.” This theory states that democratic countries do not go to war with other democratic countries. Do you think this kind of “end of history” could ever be possible? Do you believe that our world will eventually come to be made up of only liberal democracies?