The Archival Transition
from Analogue to Digital:
Revisiting Derrida and Flusser
I. introduction
1. Any account of present-day archives should not only address practical,
operational or managerial issues but also explicate the relevant theoretical
issues regarding the specific nature and societal impact of digital information
- if only because practical, operational or managerial issues, important as they
obviously are, always presuppose some underlying theoretical framework.
Unfortunately, such underlying views often remain somewhat implicit in
current debates on digital archives. In this article, we aim to meet this 'lack of
explicitness' by discussing - that is, exploratively comparing and contrasting
- two important theoretical views concerning digital information, notably in
order to unravel possible theoretical 'blind spots' and to deal with practical issues
more adequately, for instance regarding the (re-) use of digital archives and
governmental accountability.
In section II, we address Jacques Derrida's (so-called deconstructivist or
postmodernist) views on the archive in his well-known text 'Mal d'archive'
(Derrida, 1995 [1994]).1 In this text, Derrida provides us with an analysis of
the notion 'archive'. His point of departure is a distinction between 'mneme'
or 'anamnesis' (living memory or recollection) on the one hand, and
'hypomnema' (records or public records) on the other. He states for instance:
"Let us never forget this Greek distinction between mnëmëor anamnësis on the
one hand, and hypomnema on the other. The archive is hypomnesic." (Derrida
1995 [1994], p. 14) And he suggests that, contrary to classical (metaphysical
and scientific) thought, this hypomnesic character of the archive is fundamental
and irreducible, that is to say, "the idea of an archive properly speaking, of a
hypomnesic or technical archive, cannot be reduced to memory: neither to
memory as conscious reserve, nor to memory as rememoration" (Derrida 1995
[1994], p. 58). According to Derrida, this irreducibility ultimately confronts us
with a rather troubled situation, which he calls 'mal d'archive': "never to rest,
interminably, from searching for the archive right where it slips away" (Derrida
1995 [1994], p. 57). In our view, his approach embodies a highly acclaimed
arnoud glaudemans and jacco verburgt
1 Derrida's lecture text, initially entitled 'The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression', will be quoted
according to the first English translation from 1995 ('Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression', Diacritics, Vol.
25, No. 2, pp. 9-63). We will not use the 1996 translation. See Literature.
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