Of course, many more (detailed) questions could be added here. Our aim,
however, is not to be comprehensive, but simply to underline the double
meaning of Derrida's notion of consignation, denoting both result and
presupposition.
8. But what, then, would be the implications of Derrida's threefold conception of
the archive, especially regarding the digital? First of all, recall Derrida's emphasis
on the hypomnesic nature of the archive, that is, his account of the exteriority -
or, in our terms, mediality - of the archive. Consider the following quote:
the archive, as printing, writing, prosthesis, or hypomnesic technique
in general is not only the place for stocking and for conserving an
archivable content of the past which would exist in any case, such as,
without the archive, one still believes it was or will have been. No, the
technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of
the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its
relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records
the event. This is also our political experience of the so-called news media.
(Derrida 1995 [1994], p. 17)
In this passage, interestingly enough, Derrida seems to go so far as to claim that
the hypomnesic even determines the very structure of the archivable content,
rather than being just a replaceable recording technique or a presupposed
context of already existing records. In addition, this claim seems to involve
a fundamentally different way of being affected by the digital. And, indeed,
Derrida seems to be quite aware of such more experiential implications:
Is the psychic apparatus better represented or is it affected differently by all
the technical mechanisms for archivization and for reproduction, for
prostheses of so-called live memory, for simulacrums of living things
(microcomputing, electronization, computerization, etc.)? (Derrida 1995
[1994], p. 16).
This question seems to be a rhetorical one, which would imply that, according
to Derrida, we are indeed affected very differently by the digital. And, in fact, it
is not hard to find more and ample textual evidence to the support and confirm
the thesis, our thesis, that Derrida holds this view. Consider the following quote,
in which he compares the present-day digital archive with the situation after an
earthquake and confesses that he would have liked to talk about the huge impact
of (late twentieth century) digital technologies on the traditional or classical
(late ninetieth, early twentieth century) archive in terms of what he calls
retrospective science fiction:
I would have liked to devote my whole lecture to this retrospective science
fiction. I would have liked to imagine with you the scene of that other
archive [the digital archive] after the earthquake and after the "après-
coups" of its aftershocks. This is indeed where we are. (Derrida 1995
[1994], p. 17).
From a present-day perspective, from "where we are" today, it seems obvious and
rather trivial to say that we are affected by new digital developments. But what,
exactly, does it mean to say that we are really affected differently? Unfortunately,
Derrida does not really go into detail here. The only example he does refer to
is e-mail, by stating that electronic mail is "on the way to transforming the
entire public and private space of humanity, and first of all the limit between
the private, the secret (private or public), and the public or the phenomenal"
and that it is "not only a technique" and "must inevitably be accompanied
by juridical and thus political transformations", including "property rights,
publishing and reproduction rights" (Derrida 1995 [1994], pp. 17-18). One
could of course sum up a lot of other examples apart from e-mail, such as big
data, dynamic simulating models, and social media. But the crucial point,
Derrida's crucial point, should not be missed: namely that we are dealing with
(or are affected by) an entirely different logic, a fundamentally different spatial
and temporal logic, which opposes and no longer fits the (traditional) logic
of continuous representation. Because, as Derrida puts it, "if the upheavals
in progress affected the very structures of the psychic apparatus, for example
in their spatial architecture and in their economy of speed, in their processing
of spacing and of temporalization, it would no longer be a question of simple
continuous progress in representation, in the representative value of the model,
but rather of an entirely different logic." (Derrida 1995 [1994], p. 16)
III. Revisiting Flusser: conceptual framework and distinctions
9. The interesting issue Derrida raises in the previous section is, in our view, his
reference to an entirely different, non-representational or non-representative,
logic at work in the digital context. What would such a logic involve and
imply? Not only regarding what Derrida refers to as the archontic function (or
principle, power etc.) of the archive as we know it, but also taking into account
that digital machineries do not imitate (a pre-given) reality, as Slavoj Zizek
rightly signals, but rather generate and simulate semblances of a non-existing
reality - so that information in fact would consist of simulacra (see 11)?
In order to deal with these questions, it is helpful to read Flusser's analysis in
terms of Derrida's notion of retrospective science fiction, the subject matter of
this science fiction being "the scene of that other archive after the earthquake
and after the "après-coups" of its aftershocks", and "other archive" meaning
the digital archive, and stressing that this is indeed "where we are" (see #8). In
our view, Flusser's theory of the technical image not simply addresses the issue
of an entirely different logic, but also - unlike Derrida - provides a theoretical
framework to account for the specific content-technical characteristics of digital
media and information in a more substantial way. In addition, Flusser motivates
his focus on the apparently accidental or arbitrary means and techniques
of dealing with (digital) information by arguing that these have a decisive
influence on our lives: "the structure through which information is carried
[Informationstrager] exerts a decisive influence on our lives [Lebensform]."
(Flusser 2011 [1985], p. 5)
archives in liquid times
126
arnoud glaudemans and jacco verburgt the archival transition
from analogue to digital: revisiting derrida and flusser
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