Archive Fever - Derrida, Steedman, & the Archival Turn

Archive Fever is a text by the French poststructuralist, Jacques Derrida. Influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis, Derrida asks what should be included in archives, where there are gaps, and what a Freudian archive might look like. The historian Carole Steedman reflects on the historian in the archive; what are they looking for, where are the beginnings, how can you possibly do the dead justice?

Derrida cites Arkhe as being both ‘commencement’ and ‘commandment’ – both a place – an original position, a beginning, a source, and a command, an authority, an order.

Archives are the sites of the great chain, the contract between the living and the dead, the locus of power and authority.

arkhe also comes from arkheion – a house, a dwelling, a residence. A house presumes inclusion and exclusion too. Who has the right to enter? To make the law? To interpret the archive? Who has the last word?

Historian Arlette Farge has written that ‘Archives are neither faithful to reality nor totally representative of it; but they play their part in this reality, offering differences and alternatives to other possible statements.’

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Sources:

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever
Carole Steedman, Dust