User:Andre Castro/research/1.2/essay-archive
Online archives: power and remixes
Outline(unfinished)
Archive and Power
Online archive: a negotiation between "control" archive and a popular everyday communitarian archive Examples: web2.0 services: youtube, flick, facebook
The role of the remix
Does the remix of the archive plays a role in this negotiation? I reveals the glitches over authority - 2 versions of the same image ??
Introduction
In this essay I will like to discuss the online 'communitarian' popular archive. I will argues that for the majority these are still entities related to and representing authority, although built and shaped by the users. I will present the remix as strategy for, not only for gaining an understanding of the archive, but as glitches, that can defy the archive's authority.
Archive and Power
- Derrida
In 'Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression' Derrida traces back its meaning to the Greek 'arkheion' "the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded'. And at this this location official documents are written and safeguarded. The archons are not only entitled to secure the official documents, but also to interpret them in order to validate a system of power. From such interpretations the law was recalled and applied (pp: 9-10). The archive has been from its begging a tool for power, granting , the possibility for those who were allowed to interpret its documents to impose their reading on those who weren't granted such privilege. Also the archive has also been a tool for control and monitoring of the population [Norman Klein]
Although acknowledging this role archive as a policing tool validating power and knowledge structures, Appadurai takes also into account the every day life archive, the archives that belong to the individual, the family, the community. In his view, the online archive that allows for users to play a active role within its construction, 'is gradually freed from the orbit of the state and its official networks'(p.16). [Norman Klein]
online archives:
- still power structures tools;
- product of negotiated aspiration: users vs. archive institution
Examples: web2.0 services: youtube, flick, facebook
We cannot say that an online communitarian and popular archive is no longer attached its past as a power figure, never-the-less the uses users make of it transforms it. The archive becomes a site of negotiated aspiration. Users and the institution behind the archive negotiate their different and often conflicting aspirations.