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 122 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. 123

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