User:Eleanorg/1.2/Annotation: 'Archive Fever' (extract)

Archive Fever

Jaques Derrida

Notes on pp.9-21

INTRODUCTION

Archive derived from 'Arkhe', meaning both 'commencement' (read: origin, beginning) and 'commandment' (read: authority, jurisdiction).
In both of these 'principles', order comes both from geography/nature/time and also from history.
Archives conceal/'forget' these origins, for important reasons. Greek 'arkheion' originally referred to "a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superior magistrates, the /archons/, those who commanded." (p.9)
Thus archives are tied inextricably to the politics of who is considered worthy to store, interpret and guard official documents. Archives "need at once a guardian and a localization." (p.10) Thus they exist "At the intersection of the topological and the nomological, of the place and the law..." (p.10) in what Derrida dubs "topo-nomology" (p.10).
As well as needing a place and a guardian, archives need some coordinated "system or a synchrony in which all the elements articulate... unity" (p.10). Thus the commanding power is implicated in what is included, excluded, etc.
Hence, to call 'the law' into question is to radically destablize any definition of an archive. Freudian psychoanalysis is one such discourse which pursues "the deconstruction... [of] the institution of limits declared to be insurmountable..." (p.10).
Pyschoanalysis deconstructs these limits whether they issue from "family or state law, the relations between the secret and the nonsecret, or... between the private and the public..." (pp.10-11).

EXERGUE (exergue from Greek 'ex' (outside) + 'ergon' (work))

Exergue as citation draws power ("accumulating capital" (p.12)) from an archive; capitalising on its inherent violence.
Every archive "is at once /institutive/ and /conservative/. Revolutionary and traditional. ...it keeps, it puts in reserve, it saves, but in an unnatural fashion, that is to say in making the law." So it appears merely to document, but actually creates (through the operation of its organisation, exclusions, etc.).
Discussion of Freud's work on 'the death instinct'. Freud pondered rhetorically whether it's worth writing about (ie archiving) this instinct, since it's common knowledge already. But he does so, because (according to Derrida) "since it [the death drive] always operates in silence, it never leaves any archives of its own. ...It works /to destroy the archive/..." (p.14).
Relation of the archive to the psychoanalytic project of recovering early memories: "[the death drive] incites forgetfulness, amnesia, the annihiliation of memory..." (p.14).
Derrida notes the distinction between meneme (memory) and hypomnema (note or record). An archive is the latter. (thus, to arhive is not necessarily to remember? This would make sense in the context of Freud's theory of neurosis; eg 'notes' (symptoms) stand in for repressed memories)
Archives must by necessity be stored "in an /external place/ which assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of reimpression..." (p.14) - but the urge to repeat (in the Freudian sense) is inextricably linked to the death/destruction urge. Thus "the archive always works... against itself" (p.14). (Why? Isn't repetition compulsion a violence against the self, rather than against the archive of memory per se?) This drive to forget/destroy Derrida dubs "/le mal d'archive, archive fever/" (p.14).
However, archives can make use of this destructive or 'evil' force by incorporating it as an Other (not Derrida's words) - just as Christianity makes use of the devil (as a reason for belief), or fascism of Jews (as an exuse for priviledge). ".../exterior/ to him [God]... radical destruction can again be /reinvested/ in another logic... of an archive which capitalizes everything, even that which ruins it or radically contests its power: radical evil can be of service..." (p.15).
Meditation on the relationship between Freud's model of mind (a kind of archival database) and a modern (computerised) archive. What is the future of psychoanalysis in a world in which memory is increasingly stored externally, in machines? "Is the psychic apparatus /better represented/ or is it /affected differently/ by all the techincal mechanism for archivization... for prostheses of so-called lived memory....?" (p.16).
Consideration of how psychoanalysis would have evolved differently if Freud was able to correspond/record by email etc rather than handwritten letters. Used as an example of the way that "the technical structure of the /archiving/ archive also determines the structure of the /archivable/ content in in its very coming into existence... The archivization produces as much as it records an event". (p.16)
These technical changes in the "instrumental possibility of production, of printing, of conservation, and of destruction of the archive must inevitably be accompanied by juridical and thus political transformations." Derrida gives the example of reproduction rights here. (eg, Pirate Bay undermines the essential definition of an archive as that which is curated and guarded by those in power.)
Back to Freud, and memory/archive - the evil destruction drive enables the archive, for "There would indeed be no archive desired without the radical finititude, without the possibility of a forgetfulness which does not limit iteslf to repression" (p.19).
Circumcision as the inscription of a mark (thus a kind of archive).
Derrida links circumcision to an inscription in a Bible given to Freud by his father - another kind of 'mark' - which mentions Freud's circumcision.

Thoughts

Fascinating treatment of Freud's theory of memory as a type of archive
Link to PTSD as "a problem of storage and retrieval" (according to one therapist).
Connects archives (and memory) to political power: psychological theory of social 'forgetting' - eg in trauma theory of neurosis, the forbidden affect is officially denied, thus takes an unusual place in the memory's archive - or perhaps is not 'archived' at all in the conventional sense?
Is Freudian memory, then, a unique example of an archive from which nothing can be excluded, however hard we try? Ie - repressed affect returns persistently as symptom until correctly resolved, ie archived.
Need to get my head round idea of death/destruction drive simultaneously enabling (through fear of forgetfulness) and threatening (through threat of destruction) the archive. How does this exactly map onto Freudian drives/repression, or indeed to broader social repressions?