Derrida, Jacques - Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
Notes
In simple terms, I found the text to describe how the archive is essentially an attempt to control a subject. In Greece, the subject were the subjects - the people that lived within the hierarchical greek society: for them, the archive had a 'sequential' and 'jussive' function - it placed events and objects in a temporal space ("commencement"), but also within a legal space of power and control ("commandment"). So the archive has a dual function: to record, but to record in such a way as to control. The archons (the 'superior magistrates'), for example, are awarded the 'power to interpret the archives.' (2) The control comes from the archons' ability to omit, and their ability to include. As a result, the archive could be understood to be a tool to maintain a hegemonic structure.
Derrida also notes Freud's remarks about the human 'instinct of destruction' - the 'death drive'. (5) Derrida states that the consequence of this drive: "what permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than what exposes to destruction, in truth what menaces with destruction introducing, a priori, forgetfulness and the archiviolithic into the heart of the monument." (6) I am slightly unclear on this point - does he mean to archive is a destructive act? Or is it to try to reclaim control over an instinct of self-destruction? If the former, in which way is it destructive? He clarifies at the end of section 1 of the introduction that the 'archive fever', the obsessive act of archiving, is created by the death drive: "There would indeed be no archive desire without the radical finitude, without the possibility of a forgetfulness which does not limit itself to repression. [...] There is no archive fever without the threat of this death drive." (7)
One point that particularly caught my attention is the 'interface' of the archive - the methods with which the archivist creates the documentary artifacts. Derrida states: "This should above all remind us that the said archival technology no longer determines, will never have determined, merely the moment of the conservational recording, but rather the very institution of the archivable event." (6) He continues, discussing the "pressure of the printing, the impression", and how the tactile features of documentary medium inherently changes the processes and power-relationships within the act of archiving itself. -dave
I think the part about Freud's death drive is more about the reasons to archive. Like you (Dave) quoted: "There is no archive fever without the threat of this death drive". Archiving seems to be a way of trying to stop from finite things from disappearing and to remember them. It seems to deal with making decisions, such as when something becomes worth archiving. According to Derrida, Freud writes in his Civilization and Its Discontents (1929-30) he is afraid that what he is writing is common knowledge and that he is "using up paper, ink(...) the compositor's and printer's work and material". He seems to feel as if what he is writing has to contribute to the/an archive. He has to overcome the human death-drive, the drive to destroy and leave no trace.
What I find interesting (though is not discussed at great length in this text) is how archives are related to their place in time. "(...) what no longer is archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way." Archives change and are dependent on the current morals and ethics, which determine what is archived, and techniques, which determines both how things are archived and which things (new techniques == new archives (audio, video, etc.)). Also the different forms archives can take (Derrida even talks about circumcision as an archive of Judaism). - Jasper
Interesting is that Derrida is psychoanalysing why we archive. It does have a negative tone though, how archive dictates culture. In that way it would not be very open to the new and unexpected. An unfortunate set of rules that would sort of go against the development of culture by learning about other cultures?
The turning point from archive, the institution, is still open at first but then only for the privileged.
In an archive, he says, there should not be any absolute dissociation, any heterogeneity or secret which could separate, or partition, in an absolute manner. It is gathered together.
It's rather ironic for him to say that "order is no longer assured" when you cannot really classify everything. who is to say what is theoretical. what are "the limits, the borders and the distinctions"
so his theses are about the concept of archive and the history in archive. then he asks what is situated precisely between the two.
Exergue is interesting to think about in the way Derrida opens up this topic. The way these few words on the back of a coin "give the key […], the meaning or form of which ought to set the stage." it gives order even if it means contenting itself with naming the problem. the violence of a power. archival violence then it goes into the revolutionary and traditional part. it makes the law, and it makes people respect the law at the same time. and that they might connect secretly?
NOW HERE'S AN INTERESTING NOTE a recognition of a special, independent aggressive instinct means an alteration of the psycho-analytic theory of the instincts. (freud)
then there's this destruction drive which to me seems like something to want to destroy the past and only look to the present and the future i suppose? it seems sort of feral "an invincible necessity", derrida calls it, for freud to take his instinct of destruction, to take the form of a fixed thesis. an archival piece. "an irreducible and originary perversity.
- i have a feeling we're trying to penetrate the mind here. where derrida says:"it always operates in silence, it never leaves any archives of its own." these destructive thoughts is what I'm guessing he's referring to, otherwise i'm completely not getting this piece of text.
in simple words. to destroy the archive is to remain silent.
- oh and to point out an uninteresting pov on archive, to me, is the location. i have yet to be convinced of this essential definition of archive that the topology is of so much importance.
archive fever now gets explained. in its negative sense. le mal d'archive. mal ofcourse in french means bad, or when something is not functioning i guess. so to me (not being french though) le mal d'archive would translate to something like, the problem of archive, or the bad thing about archive. this death drive.
a valid point. that Judaism is justified by the Aryan ideal. "the existence of the Devil can serve as an excuse to God" the existence of evil can serve as an excuse to good? (evil for evil's sake) evil is in rebellion against good so that Judaism is to blame for a bad economy even though Freud was an atheist he preferred to call himself a Jew (his heritage is Jewish). "he was aware of the powerful influence of religion on identity. He acknowledged that his Jewish heritage as well as the antisemitism he frequently encountered had shaped his own personality. "My language is German. My culture, my attainments are German. I considered myself German intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in Germany and German Austria. Since that time, I prefer to call myself a Jew," he wrote in 1925." (taken from http://psychology.about.com/od/sigmundfreud/p/freud_religion.htm)
I found this article online while I was Googling the word Exergue. It's about someone who read Derrida's archive fever while creating an Electronic Lesbian Poetry Archive.
"This is what he wants us to realize before we even begin to contemplate the archive: the nature of an archive is to be both authoritarianly transparent and authoritatively concealed."
(http://julierenszer.blogspot.com/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html) -Dennis