Fashionable nonsense or professional rebirth: Postmodernism and the practice of archives

Archivaria

Volumn 51, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 14-35

  Cook, Terry ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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EID: 79960481368     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (116)

1. On archivists' general disinclination to assess critically the impact of postmodern ideas for their profession's concepts and practice, Brien Brothman, "Declining Derrida: Integrity, Tensegrity, and the Preservation of Archives from Deconstruction," Archivaria 48 (Fall 1999), pp. 64-88.
2. One anonymous reviewer of this manuscript suggested that the profession's reluctance in this regard is reminiscent of the years lost in failing to engage seriously the impact of electronic records for archives. Electronic records are pervasive, yet very few archives have well-developed (or any) programmes to deal with them beyond the experimental stage. The cyber-horse is out of the barn, so to speak, and with it the loss of many archival records. Postmodernism similarly is pervasive, as will be suggested later in this essay. The parallel is instructive and troubling.
3. G.R. Elton, Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 12-13+28+36-37, and passim.
4. Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How a Discipline is Being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists (Paddington, NSW, 1996).
5. Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History, American 2d ed. (London and New York, 1999).
6. Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (London and New York, 1995), p. 97, and passim.
7. Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia, 1990).
8. Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism (Oxford, 1996).
9. Bertens, Idea of the Postmodern, p. 202. This chapter (pp. 185-208, and especially extended note 1, pp. 205-7) addresses postmodernism and feminism, and the problem of political agency.
10. Elton, Return to Essentials, p. 30.
11. By contrast, on the benefits of hermeneutics and its application as an archival methodology, especially in macro-appraisal, see, Richard Brown, "Records Acquisition Strategy and Its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of Archival Hermeneutics," Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 34-56
12. "The Value of 'Narrativity' in the Appraisal of Historical Documents: Foundation for a Theory of Archival Hermeneutics," Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), pp. 152-56.
13. Elton, Return to Essentials, p. 28.
14. To make his meaning absolutely clear in a classic diatribe, concerning the postmodern pioneers from philosophers Heidegger and Adorno (he could have added Nietzsche and Gadamer) and literary and cultural theorists Saussure, Barthes, and Derrida (and he might have added Lyotard and Levi-Strauss), and their theoretical transferral to history via Foucault and his many followers, Elton asserts that these leading postmodern thinkers could be fairly characterized thus: "German philosophy and French esprit - a dangerous cocktail because while the former may be incomprehensible it looks wise, and the latter demonstrates that the absurd always sounds better in French."
15. John D. Caputo, editor and commentator, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York, 1997), pp. 38-39.
16. I thank Heather MacNeil for bringing this to my attention.
17. Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (New York, 1998).
18. His original article is reprinted as an appendix in the book. For a strong counterattack on the silly dishonesty of Sokal's work and its complete misunderstanding of Derrida and deconstruction, see, Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, pp. 71-81.
19. Bertens, Idea of the Postmodern, p. 121.
20. Bertens, Idea of the Postmodern, p. Ibid., p. 3.
21. Stuart Sim, ed., The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought (Cambridge, 1998).
22. Terry Cook, "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift," Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997), pp. 17-63,
23. A shorter, less complete version of which is published as "Interaction of Archival Theory and Practice Since the Publication of the Dutch Manual," Archivum (1997).
24. For an analysis of the possible connections between an archival medium (the new Daguerreotype photograph), archival theory and practice (new articulation of respect des fonds in Louis Phillippe's France), and the spirit of an age (scientific and empirical positivism), Joan M. Schwartz, "'Records of Simple Truth and Precision': Photography, Archives, and the Illusion of Control," Archivaria 50 (Fall 2000), pp. 1-40.
25. Archival educator Terry Eastwood has observed that "one must understand the political, economic, social and cultural milieu of any given society to understand its archives," adding that "the ideas held at any given time about archives are surely but a reflection of wider currents in intellectual history." Terence M. Eastwood, "Reflections on the Development of Archives in Canada and Australia," in Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, eds., Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping (Melbourne, 1993), p. 27.
26. Barbara L. Craig, "Outward Visions, Inward Glance: Archives History and Professional Identity," Archival Issues: Journal of the Midwest Archives Conference 17, no. 2 (1992), pp. 113-24.
27. The first mention of postmodernism (at least in English) by an archivist in an article title was by Terry Cook, in "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Era," Archives and Manuscripts 22 (November 1994), pp. 300-329.
28. The themes were anticipated in his "Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal," in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), pp. 38-70
29. "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas," Archivaria, and "Archival Science and Postmodernism: New Formulations for Old Concepts," Archival Science.
30. Two pioneering postmodern archivists before Cook were also Canadian, Brien Brothman and Richard Brown. Among other works, see Brien Brothman, "Orders of Value: Probing the Theoretical Terms of Archival Practice," Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), pp. 78-100
31. "The Limits of Limits: Derridean Deconstruction and the Archival Institution," Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 205-220
32. And his probing review of Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever, in Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997)
33. Which was much deepened in his "Declining Derrida," Archivaria
34. Richard Brown, "The Value of 'Narrativity' in the Appraisal of Historical Documents," Archivaria
35. "Records Acquisition Strategy," Archivaria,
36. "Death of a Renaissance Record-Keeper: The Murder of Tomasso da Tortona in Ferrara, 1385," Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997), pp. 1-43.
37. Preben Mortensen, "The Place of Theory in Archival Practice," Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999), pp. 1-26
38. Tom Nesmith, "Still Fuzzy, But More Accurate: Some Thoughts on the 'Ghosts' of Archival Theory," Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999), pp. 136-50
39. Joan Schwartz, "'We make our tools and our tools make us': Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics," Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 40-74
40. "'Records of Simple Truth and Precision,'" Archivaria
41. Bernadine Dodge, "Places Apart: Archives in Dissolving Space and Time," Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997), pp. 118-31
42. Theresa Rowat, "The Records and the Repository as a Cultural Form of Expression," Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 198-204
43. Robert McIntosh, "The Great War, Archives, and Modern Memory," Archivaria 46 (Fall 1998), pp. 1-31
44. Carolyn Heald, "Is There Room for Archives in the Postmodern World?" American Archivist 59 (Winter 1996), pp. 88-101
45. Lilly Koltun, "The Promise and Threat of Digital Options in an Options in an Archival Age," Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999), pp. 114-35.
46. Eric Ketelaar, "Archivalisation and Archiving," Archives and Manuscripts 27, no. 1 (May 1999), pp. 54-61
47. "Looking Through the Record into the Rose Garden," Arkhiyyon. Reader in Archival Studies and Documentation 10-11 (1999), pp. XXVII-XLII
48. Verne Harris, "Claiming Less, Delivering More: A Critique of Positivist Formulations on Archives in South Africa," Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997), pp. 132-41
49. "Redefining Archives in South Africa: Public Archives and Society in Transition, 1990-96," Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996), pp. 6-27
50. Exploring Archives: An Introduction to Archival Ideas and Practice in South Africa, 2d ed. (Pretoria, 2000)
51. Sello Hatang, "Archives, Identity and Place: A Dialogue on What It (Might) Mean(s) to be an African Archivist," ESARBICA Journal 19 (2000), pp. 45-58
52. Elizabeth Kaplan, "We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are," American Archivist 63 (Spring/Summer 2000), pp. 126-51
53. Implicitly at least some of the writings of Americans Margaret Hedstrom, Richard Cox, Fran Blouin, Nancy Bartlett, and James O'Toole, and Australians Frank Upward, Sue McKemmish, and Barbara Reed. Planned publication in the next year of at least two books on archives and the construction of social memory will expand the number of archivists involved in considering the implications of postmodernism for their profession.
54. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago and London, 1996, originally in French in 1995, from a series of 1994 lectures).
55. "The Archive," History of the Human Sciences 11 (November 1998) and 12 (May 1999), featuring some twenty articles by scholars in many disciplines devoted to analysing the theoretical issues surrounding the archive as social and societal phenomenon. The Sawyer Seminars on "Archives, Documentation, and the Institutions of Social Memory," hosted by the Bentley Institute at the University of Michigan during the 2000-01 academic year, similarly heard scores of papers and commentaries, many of which will be published, from scholars across numerous disciplines on many aspects of the archive and society.
56. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, p. 70. In addition to Verne Harris's and Brien Brothman's works cited throughout these notes, Caputo's book is a fine introductory overview of Derrida's work and the nature of deconstruction.
57. Schwartz, "'We make our tools and our tools make us': Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics," Archivaria, passim.
58. Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis, 1984, French original 1979), p. xxiv (emphasis added).
59. There are many books that assess the cultural, social, intellectual, and global dimensions of the postmodern condition, or postmodernity. Three that I have found especially useful are David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA, 1990, numerous reprintings)
60. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (New York, 1991), pp. 325-413
61. Norman Cantor, The American Century: Varieties of Culture in Modern Times (New York, 1997), pp. 425-502.
62. Some of these arguments in this and the preceding paragraph draw on the analysis in Cook, "Archival Science and Postmodernism," Archival Science. As noted in that essay, there seems little point of citing scores of articles and books that have shaped my understanding of postmodernism. Perhaps enough to say that, in addition to Foucault's historical methodology and Derrida's seminal volume, I gained much by an early exposure to the work of the Canadian literary scholar,
63. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London and New York, 1989)
64. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (New York and London, 1988); to Richard Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind, and of course to the writings of those archivists (happily growing in number) who have explored rather than ignored postmodernism, as outlined in note 14 above. I should also like to acknowledge probing discussions around postmodernity over the years with Brien Brothman, Rick Brown, Bernadine Dodge, Verne Harris, Candace Loewen, Tom Nesmith, Jean-Ste ́phen Piche ́, Joan Schwartz, and Hugh Taylor.
65. John Ralston Saul, "The Inclusive Shape of Complexity,"Keynote address to the International Conference on Canadian Studies: "The Canadian Distinctiveness into the XXIst Century," (University of Ottawa, 18 May 2000), publication forthcoming.
66. John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (Concord, 1995), pp. 18+20+28+36-37.
67. Sue McKemmish, "Are Records Ever Actual?" in Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggott, eds., The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives First Fifty Years (Clayton, 1994). She draws inspiration in her opening epigraph from Derrida, and from my own work on the postcustodial concept of the archival fonds based on "logical or virtual or multiple realities," rather than its traditional base of physical custodianship.
68. Terry Cook, "The Concept of the Archival Fonds: Theory, Description, and Provenance in the Post-Custodial Era," in Terry Eastwood, ed., The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice (Ottawa, 1992), p. 38.
69. Cook, "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas," pp. 18-19.
70. Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994), especially chapter 3: "Archival Memory and the Destruction of the Past".
71. Richard Brown, "Death of a Renaissance Record-Keeper," Archivaria;
72. Robert McIntosh, "The Great War, Archives, and Modern Memory," Archivaria 46 (Fall 1998), pp. 1-31
73. Verne Harris, "Redefining Archives in South Africa," Archivaria
74. "The Archive" in History of the Human Sciences. On the symbolic nature of archives, see James O'Toole, "The Symbolic Significance of Archives," American Archivist 56 (Spring 1993), pp. 234-55.
75. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York and Oxford, 1986), pp. 6-7+57+151+200, and passim
76. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy (New York and Oxford, 1993) which details the systemic exclusion of women from history and archives, and beginning in the late nineteenth-century efforts to correct this by creating women's archives (especially chapter 11, "The Search for Women's History").
77. Riane Eisler, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco, 1987), pp. 71-73+91-93.
78. Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (Cambridge, MA and London, 1998).
79. Mortensen, "The Place of Theory in Archival Practice," Archivaria
80. Schwartz, "Records of Simple Truth and Precision," Archivaria
81. Cook, "What is Past is Prologue," Archivaria.
82. Nesmith, "Still Fuzzy, But More Accurate: Some Thoughts on the 'Ghosts' of Archival Theory," Archivaria.
83. On the ghost metaphor in Derrida's writing concerning the persistence of the "Other" being ever present, of never being able to fully escape the past, see Stuart Sim, Derrida and the End of History (Cambridge, 1999), which is a critical appreciation of Derrida's Specters of Marx (1993, an American translation and thus the Americanized spelling).
84. See especially the conference keynote address on journey or odyssey, the conference theme, delivered by Verne Harris, which appears in revised form in this issue of Archivaria.
85. Hutcheon, Poetics of Postmodernism, p. 122.
86. Ketelaar, "Archivalisation and Archiving," Archives and Manuscripts.
87. In the companion piece to this article, I have suggested how postmodern thinking viewed this way might change significantly concepts of provenance, original order, the record, the fonds, the archives, and "archival science." I will not repeat those observations here.
88. Cook, "Archival Science and Postmodernism," Archival Science.
89. From another perspective based on an analysis of the historical evolution of archival ideas, I have suggested similar conclusions: see, Cook, "What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas," Archivaria.
90. Mortensen, "The Place of Theory in Archival Practice," Archivaria. Virtually all the archival thinkers cited in note 14 have also suggested new ways of viewing traditional precepts.
91. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York and London, 1993), p. 121 (from an intriguing chapter entitled "Feminism and Deconstruction, Again: Negotiations"). Spivak offers a keen reading of Derrida within feminist and postcolonial studies. Verne Harris kindly brought her work to my attention.
92. In addition to internal documents at the National Archives of Canada on the theory, strategy, and criteria of macro-appraisal, for the basic concepts and strategic approaches, Terry Cook, The Archival Appraisal of Records Containing Personal Information: A RAMP Study With Guidelines (Paris, 1991)
93. Terry Cook, "Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal," in The Archival Imagination
94. Terry Cook, "'Many are called but few are chosen': Appraisal Guidelines for Sampling and Selecting Case Files," Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991), pp. 25-50
95. Richard Brown, "Macro-Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator," Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 121-72
96. Rick Brown, "Records Acquisition Strategy and Its Theoretical Foundation," Archivaria.
97. Verne Harris, "Seeing (in) Blindness: South Africa, Archives and Passion for Justice," draft essay for presentation to New Zealand archivists, August 2001
98. Verne Harris, Exploring Archives, 2d ed. (Pretoria, 2000), p. 45.
99. Terry Eastwood, "Putting the Parts of the Whole Together: Systematic Arrangement of Archives," Archivaria 50 (Fall 2000), pp. 115-16.
100. Terry Cook, "The Concept of the Archival Fonds in the Post-Custodial Era," Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993), pp. 24-37
101. David Bearman, Archival Methods (Pittsburgh, 1989), chapters 3, "Arrangement and Description" and 5, "Intelligent Artifices: Structures for Intellectual Control,"
102. "Documenting Documentation," Archivaria 34 (Summer 1992), pp. 33-49
103. Chris Hurley, "What, If Anything, is a Function?" Archives and Manuscripts 21, no. 2 (November 1993), pp. 208-21
104. "Ambient Functions - Abandoned Children to Zoos," Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995), pp. 21-39
105. "Problems with Provenance," Archives and Manuscripts 23, no. 2 (November 1995), pp. 234-59.
106. Sim, Derrida and the End of History, p. 50.
107. Jean-Stéphen Piché, "Doing What's Possible with What We've Got: Using the World Wide Web toIntegrate Archival Functions," American Archivist 61 (Spring 1998). This article (based onreal prototypes at the National Archives of Canada developed by the author) responded to the kind of "outside the box" thinking advocated by Margaret Hedstrom in her
108. "Descriptive Practices for Electronic Records: Deciding What is Essential and Imagining What is Possible," Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993), pp. 53-63.
109. Bob Krawczyk, "Cross Reference Heaven: The Abandonment of the Fonds as the Primary Level of Arrangement for Ontario Government Records," Archivaria 48 (Fall 1999), pp. 131-52.
110. This is patterned on the Australian system. For an introduction, see the articles by Chris Hurley in note 38, as well as his "The Australian ('Series') System: An Exposition," in McKemmish and Piggott, eds., Records Continuum.
111. Sue McKemmish et al., "Describing Records in Context in the Continuum: The Australian Recordkeeping Metadata System," Archivaria 48 (Fall 1999), pp. 3-43.
112. Examples of such "functional" advocates, as cited by Jean-Stéphen Piché (in "Doing What's Possible with What We've Got," American Archivist, p. 122, n. 51), include David Bearman, Margaret Hedstrom, and Helen Samuels in the United States and Tom Nesmith, Heather Mac-Neil, and Terry Cook in Canada.
113. Terry Cook, "The Imperative of Challenging Absolutes in Graduate Archival Education Programs: Issues for Educators and the Profession," American Archivist 63 (Fall/Winter 2000), especially pp. 384-86.
114. Harris, "Seeing (in) Blindness: South Africa, Archives and Passion for Justice," p. 11 (mss).
115. Tom Nesmith, "Archives from the Bottom Up: Social History and Archival Scholarship," in Tom Nesmith, ed., Canadian Archival Studies and the Rediscovery of Provenance (Metuchen, NJ and London, 1993), originally published in 1982, where Nesmith presciently defined such archival scholarship as focussing principally on the history of the record in all its rich context across its entire continuum of existence.
116. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," Bringing It All Back Home (1965), words and music by Bob Dylan, copyright by Bob Dylan and Columbia Records, cited under fair dealing provisions.