and widely adopted stance on the archive, especially on the important notion
of scriptural recording. However, an explicit account of the concrete, that is
functional and technical, aspects of digital information is largely missing.
In section III, we address Vilém Flusser's less well-known analysis of what he calls
the technical image - a concept which includes the digital - in his intriguing
book Ins Universum der technischen Bilder (Flusser, 1996 [1985]).2 In this
text, one of the major concerns and objectives is to explicate, and account for,
a distinction between 'imaginieren' (belonging to the realm of what he calls
traditional images) and 'einbilden' (belonging to the realm of technical images).
For example, he writes: "Traditional images are mirrors. They capture the vectors
of meaning that move from the world toward us, code them differently, and
reflect them, recoded in this way, on a surface. Therefore, it is correct to ask what
[was] they mean. Technical images are projections. They capture meaningless
signs that come to us from the world (photons, electrons) and code them to give
them a meaning. So, it is incorrect to ask what they mean (unless one gave the
meaningless answer: they mean photons). With them the question to ask is,
what is the purpose [wozu] of making the things they show mean what they do?
For what they show is merely a function of their purpose." (Flusser 2011 [1985],
p. 48) In our view, this crucial distinction implies a constructivist, functionalist,
and modernist approach to digital information and, most importantly, enables
to understand the digital archive in a more adequate, techno-functional or
content-technical, way.
In section IV, we systematically reinterpret Derrida's conception and
questions regarding the archive in light of Flusser's conceptual framework and
distinctions. We readdress the essential elements of Derrida's conception of
the archive, which we believe are in need of reinterpretation, in light of Flusser's
account of, and emphasis on, the technical aspects of the digital.
Finally, in section V, the conclusion, we not only briefly resume our findings in
sections II-IV, but also formulate five more or less programmatic questions and
theses concerning the archive and the digital.
2. Before turning to section II, let us first illustrate the difference in approach
between Derrida and Flusser by quoting their remarkable descriptions of the
apparently trivial experience of pressing keys on a keyboard (of a typewriter or a
computer). First a quotation from Derrida's text: while tinkling away on
my computer. I asked myself what is the moment proper to the archive, if there
is such a thing, the instant of archivization strictly speaking, which is not,
and I will come back to this, so-called live or spontaneous memory
(mnëmëor anamnësis), but rather a certain hypomnesic and prosthetic
experience of the technical substrate. Was it not at this very instant that, having
written something or other on the screen, the letters remaining as if suspended
and floating yet at the surface of a liquid element, I pushed a certain key to
"save" a text undamaged, in a hard and lasting way, to protect marks from being
erased, so as thus to ensure salvation and indemnity, to stock, to accumulate,
and, in what is at once the same thing and something else, to make the sentence
thus available for printing and for reprinting, for reproduction?" (Derrida 1995
[1994], p. 22) In this quote, a particular focus on the save key is discernible.
By doing so, Derrida prioritises the hypomnesic and recording character of
archivisation. The latter notion is of course well known in archival science.
In section II of this article, we stress the importance of the formal aspects of the
hypomnesic in Derrida's text (namely sign, materiality, place, and repetitivity).3
In the following passage from Flusser's book, the key use seems to be limited
(not unlike Derrida) to the linear recording, or 'saving', of a text. In the second
part of the quote, however, Flusser clearly prioritises the computational aspect
of key use and links it - albeit retrospectively - to the emergence of technical
images. Here is the passage: "As I run my fingertips selectively over the keyboard
of my typewriter to write this text, I achieve a miracle. I break my thoughts
up into words, words into letters, and then select the keys that correspond to
these letters. I calculate ['kalkuliere'] my ideas. And the letters then appear on
the piece of paper that has been put into the typewriter, each for itself, clear
and distinct, and nevertheless forming a linear text. The typewriter computes
['komputiert'] what I have calculated. It succeeds in packaging the particles into
rows. That is a miracle, despite the transparency of the process. By observing
how images are synthesized on a computer screen by pressing keys, we can,
looking back in a sense, recognize the miracle of mechanical button pressing
as well: it is the miracle of calculation followed by computation, the miracles
to which technical images owe their existence." (Flusser 2011 [1985], p. 24)
From this quote, it is clear that the emergence of technical images (Flusser's
key concept) is based on calculations and, especially, computations - the
digital being the perfect form of the technical image through the technique of
bit encoding (0/1), which in turn enables algorithmic processing. Therefore,
Flusser stresses that we should emancipate ourselves from being merely "[b]
utton-pressing functionaries" (tastendrückenden Funktionare), only able of using
save, send, and receive keys, and adopt what he calls "the computing touch"
(komputierendes Tasten). For our telematic and dialogical society, as Flusser calls
and envisions it, demands or requires a more conscious use of keys.
II. Revisiting Derrida: relevant concepts and pertinent questions
3. In this section, we further explore Derrida's theoretical views on the archive
- his archival theory, if you will - by discussing a few relevant concepts or
conceptual distinctions he uses and a few pertinent questions and issues he
raises. Obviously, it is impossible to discuss all the ins and outs of Derrida's quite
complicated and layered text, let alone his wider oeuvre, which - incidentally
- still seems to be highly controversial, both among philosophers and archival
theorists and scientists.
archives in liquid times
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arnoud glaudemans and jacco verburgt the archival transition
from analogue to digital: revisiting derrida and flusser
2 Flusser's book was first published in 198 5 (edited by Andreas Müller-Pohle). In this article, we are referring
to the English translation from 2011. Whenever necessary, we have quoted Flusser's original German
terminology from the fifth edition (1996). See Literature.
3 In our view, much of the archival literature on Derrida aims to account for archivisation, not primarily in
terms of these formal aspects of the archive, but rather in terms of social and cultural contexts (or factors).
This socio-cultural or social constructivist approach seems to involve what Ketelaar calls 'archivalisation':
"Before archivization is another 'moment of truth'. It is archivalization, a neologism which I invented,
meaning the conscious or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider something
worth archiving." (Ketelaar, 2001, p. 133) In this article, we do not address the question as to whether such a
perspective on archivisation is sufficiently adequate to account for the hypomnesic characteristics Derrida
ascribes to the archive.
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