reality, it has the tendency to encourage exclusion, especially when motivated by
politics. Heritagization then becomes a 'means to diffuse doctrines and define
communities that should embrace them.'10 For such a community, a collective
identity is needed; that identity should be based on a social memory to give the
community continuity, cohesion and consistency. In the construction of a social
memory, heritage, especially archives, can be very useful as they can document
the common past.11
An example of heritagization could recently be witnessed at the Nationaal
Archief. On February 28, 2012, the Nationaal Archief welcomed more than
50 representatives of indigenous tribes of Taiwan. They were spearheaded by
their minister of Indigenous Affairs and accompanied by the director of the
Taipei Representative Office in the Netherlands. Despite the relatively brief
presence of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Taiwan (1624-1662),
the Daghregisters (accounts of daily affairs) of VOC Fort Zeelandia contain
a wealth of information about the history of Taiwan. They describe in detail
both the original Austronesian society and the early Chinese settlements of
the 17th century. As this information is practically not available through other
written sources, it is not surprising that the Daghregisters were translated into
Chinese. The representatives of the indigenous tribes, however, especially came
to the Nationaal Archief to view the original documents, which they, obviously,
could not read. Upon seeing the records, they became visibly excited though.
Incomprehensible or not, the Daghregisters symbolize a past they wish to be
part of.
Archives as information
Appropriating archives to evoke a common past: this seems in stark contrast
to their administrative, legal and research purposes. However, records can
never be regarded as neutral repositories of facts, as their creation was based
upon predominant ideas about what should be remembered and what should
be forgotten. Even archives which have not been ascribed any heritage value
are, from the very moment they were conceived, shaped by the politics of
memory. Therefore, rather than studying archives-as-source, they should be
examined as expressions as well as instruments of those in power. The American
anthropologist Ann Stoler coined this approach the 'archival turn', repositioning
the archive as a subject of investigation rather than just a site of research.12
For researchers, this approach may be fairly new; for archivists it should not. In
any case, archivists have always made decisions which seriously affected value,
form, arrangement, description, interpretation and use of archives. Records may
be created by those in power, but once the responsibility has been transferred,
they become recreated by archivists. Preferably while respecting their historical,
JINNA SMIT TO CLAIM OR NOT TO CLAIM - SHARING ARCHIVES: POLICY AND PRACTICE
9 A short, but useful discussion of the basics of the 'Authorized Heritage Discourse' and of alternative para
digms is given by Benjamin Trias. See: Trias, Living at the Gates of History, 6-18.
10 Trias, Living at the Gates, 14.
11 Social memory is the sum of collected memories; it indicates the social process of remembering. See:
Ketelaar, 'Sharing: collected memories in communities of records', 44-61, especially p. 48 and p. 54. See
also: Thomassen, Archiefwetenschap, 11.
12 Stoler, 'Colonial Archives', 87-109; Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 44-46. See also: Schwartz and Cook,
'Archives, Records and Power', 6.
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