Claiming less, delivering more: A critique of Positivist formulations on archives in South Africa

Archivaria

Volumn 44, Issue , 1997, Pages 132-141

  Harris, Verne ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 52549108113     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. The word "postmodernity" means different things to different people. In this article I use it in the sense employed by Jean-Francois Lyotard in his The Postmodem Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, 1984). He uses the word "postmodem" to describe. " the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. it designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts" (p. xxiii). Richard Tarnas employs it similarly, positing an intellectual sensibility "increasingly bereft of established certainties," yet also fundamentally open in ways it had never been before. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World View (New York, 1991). p. 394.
2. For an extended account and contextualization of this discourse, see my "Redefining Archives in South Africa: Public Archives and Society in Transition, 1990-1996, " Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996).
3. The extent to which this discourse informed the National Archives of South Africa Act (1996) is explored in my "Transforming Discourse and Legislation: A Perspective on South Africa's New National Archives Act, " ACARM Newsletter 18 (1996).
4. These Positivist ideas also, of course, shape what archivists understand by "the past, " what archivists understand by "revealing the past, " and how archivists go about "revealing the past. "
5. This understanding of the word "archives" is pervasive in South African archival discourse. A good example appears in the South African Society of Archivists' Professional Code for South African Archivists (Pretoria, 1993), section one.
6. Numerous examples of this type of formulation could be cited. One appears in the 1995 Annual Report of the Director of Archives: Annual Reports of the Directorate State Archives and Heraldic Services, RP4111996, p. 1. Another appears in the "Report on Archives in South Africa by Luli Callinicos and Andr6 Odendaal, Convenors of the Archives Sub-committee of the Arts and Culture Task Group (ACTAG), " South African Archives Journal 38 (1996), p. 35 (par. 3.1).
7. See Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa, " p. 16.
8. The 1995 Annual Report of the Director of Archives, for instance, asserts that "the State Archives Service is responsible for preserving a national archival heritage. In a sense this heritage is the collective memory of the government and the people" (p. 1).
9. While it is true that this note is sounded loudest from political platforms, it is also heard in institutional annual reports, publicity materials, conference floors, and in the professional literature.
10. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago and London, 1996). p. 90.
11. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago and London, 1996). p. 90.
12. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York, 1992), pp. 128-30.
13. Barbara Belyea, "Images of Power: DerridalFoucault/Harley, " Cartographica 29, no. 2 (1992). pp. 4,5, and 7.
14. Terry Cook, "Keeping Our Electronic Memory: Approaches for Securing Computer-generated Records, " South African Archives Journal 37 (1995), p. 89.
15. Derrida, Archive Fever, p. 100.
16. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
17. For a powerful articulation of this argument, see Terry Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: the Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-custodial and Post-modernist Era, "Archives and Manuscripts 22, no. 2 (1994). See in particular p. 307 of this article.
18. The National Archives of South Africa utilizes a state computer bureau (Bureau Nucleus) for the management of its archival electronic records. It also has a policy identifying categories of electronic record which are best preserved by the creating body. See also Terry Cook, "Leaving Archival Electronic Records in Institutions: Policy and Monitoring Arrangements at the National Archives of Canada, " Archives and Museum Informatics 9, no. 2 (1995).
19. Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds, " p. 304.
20. See the section on preservation in David Bearman's Archival Methods, Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report 9 (Pittsburgh, 1989).
21. And this sliver of a sliver of a sliver is seldom more than partially described.
22. Derrida, Archive Fever, pp. 4 and 5.
23. Of course, the role played by archives, particularly public archives, in documenting rights and supporting records management, needs to be built into the equation.
24. See Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa, " p. 18.
25. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
26. A comparison of visitor statistics at four Pietermaritzburg institutions illustrates the point. In 1996 the Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository received 2,096 visitors, the Tatham Art Gallery approximately 40,000, and the Natal Museum received 48,633. The Natal Society Library averag-e d over 2,000 a day. Of course these statistics demand interrogation. A two hour visit to the library by someone wanting to read national newspapers has a weight very different to that of a day-long visit to the archives by an historian researching a text book which will impact on thousands of students. By the same token, a family of three's morning at the museum or art gallery has a different weight to a day at the archives by three Land Commission researchers investigating a land claim which might affect the lives of a large community. Nevertheless, the statistics do tell a story.
27. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, pp. 5.45, and 51.
28. See Andor Skotnes, "People's Archives and Oral History in South Africa: A Traveller's Account, " South African Archives Journal 37 (1995).
29. Carolyn Hamilton explores this aspect in her " 'Living by Fluidity': Oral Histories, Material Custodies and the Politics of Preservation, " paper presented at the Conference, Words and Voices: Critical Pracrices of Orality in Afnca and Afncan Studies, Bellagio, Italy, February 1997.
30. Quoted by Hamilton, " 'Living by Fluidity', " p. 17.
31. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 22.
32. See Hamilton, "'Living by Fluidity', " p. 27.
33. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, p. 409.