themes are suitable to figure on the agendas of fellow professionals.
History itself, the content of archives, comes out well only in local culture and
in circles of other practitioners: historians.
The archivist's position on the seesaw between local identity and culture on
the one hand, and, on the other hand, an internationally developing profession
with common standards and ethics in my opinion not only constitutes the
richness of this occupation, but can be thought of as paradigmatic for the
condition humaine itself. The search for a balance between the familiarities of
culture and the need to comply with the set of values and rules we need for our
international relations, in short civilisation, can be regarded as the key-issue
of our time.
The image we have of the past is crucial for identity. This applies to indivi
duals as well as to nations and cultures. Consequently, history has a huge politi
cal meaning and the way it is being interpreted can be crucial for the well-being
of entire peoples.
We cannot be held responsible for false interpretations of sources belonging
to our holdings and abuse of historical notions. But the ethics of our profession
obliges us to aim at the highest possible degree of honesty and openness in order
to provide researchers with reliable sources and to ensure that, if necessary,
existing images of the past can be verified again and again with help of the
sources. The basic rules of the profession can be summarised as respecting the
context or network of relations within which information emerges and is being
used. This principle was developed and defined in the nineteenth century and
solemnly endorsed and proclaimed as the profession's primary guideline by the
first international congress of archivists in Brussels in 1910. Until now it has not
lost anything of its validity and is, on the contrary, just proving its vitality in
current debates on fundamental topics like appraisal and the administration of
machine-readable documents. In these discussions, as in many texts of contem
porary philosophers of history and epistemology, contextuality is a core concept,
indicating that "describing something is a matter of relating it to other things".67
This means that, contrary to the opinion of essentialist and foundationalist
theorists, the "what" of an object or event can only be understood if we also take
into consideration the "who", "where", "when", "why", etc. We as archivists
being "responsible for contexts, not just for plain information"68 have the task
to ensure all researchers, including those who come from abroad or belong to
groups we do not like, equal availability of reliable sources. In a discussion on
the origins of violent nationalism Eric Hobsbawm once remarked, with a wink to
the French philosopher Ernest Renan: "Getting one's history wrong is part of
being a nation". The evil, however, is not only in misunderstanding one's own
history. Lack of knowledge of and the emerging, spreading and persistence of
false ideas about the historical background of others, individuals or entire
nations, are equally dangerous.
This is why one of the most essential objectives of an international professional
organisation like ICA is and must continue to be facilitating research in sources
on a global scale, helping in clearing away barriers, and promoting the distribu
tion of finding-aids and microfilm copies of sources. Knowledge
about other countries and cultures breaks down isolation and helps to avoid
misconceptions about others.
In this respect the world-wide exchange of written information and
personnel, the establishing of digital networks and the furthering of mutual
access are not only a matter of professional solidarity, but also a vital contri
bution to making the planet habitable.
Between Brussels and Beijing lies a century in which we have lost a great deal of
the modernist optimism which characterised the start of it. The chairman of the
archivists section of the Brussels congress, Samuel Muller thought that it would
be possible to solve all international problems by means of meetings like that.69
Our belief in universal solutions and consensus in the sense of Muller and
monist bodies in the sense of Buck has diminished or even entirely vanished.
But there is no reason to be cynical. The awareness of differences and the
necessity of pluralism only call for a pragmatic approach, in which the barren
instrumentality is humanised by recognition, solidarity and responsibility.
Where consensus can not be found, similarity of objectives may suffice for
effective co-operation.
Closing the triumphant final session of the Brussels congress chairman
Muller summoned his fellow archivists "to stand up and get out of the dusty
studies they used to hide in" and called them to engage in real life: "Vivons,
messieurs!"70 I really do not know what Muller had in mind using the words
"real life", but if he meant to say that the significance of our work reaches
beyond the walls of our studies and the interests of our profession and that we
should act accordingly, I think that his call is still valid.
DE PROFESSIE
67 Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (1991), p. 100. See on context theory among others:
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962); Christopher Lloyd, The Structures
of History (1993); Nicholas Rescher, Pluralism; Against the Demand for Consensus (1993), especially pp. 97
ff.; Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis.
68 Angelika Menne-Haritz, "Appraisal in German archival history", in: NAB 98 (1994), pp. 28-41. Here: p. 39.
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JAN VAN DEN BROEK FROM BRUSSELS TO BEIJING
69 See paragraph 2.1.
70NAB 19 (1910-1911), p. 79.
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