Omelettes in the Stack: Archival Fragility and the Aforeafter

  • Antonina Lewis

Abstract

In Beckett’s novel, the eponymous Molloy suffers in equal measure an inability to remember and a failure to forget. He is a cipher for the archive and all its discontents. As a way of thinking through archival discontent, this article introduces two new expressions into archival discourse: aforeafter, to describe the condition of archival temporality and the archival tense (that which is over and goes on), and archival fragility, to name the discomfort of archivists confronted with proximate damages of their professional practice. As part of the conversations about and ongoing reassessments of archival power and function, I offer the aforeafter as an instrument in resituating the archive as sociocultural form and archival fragility as a means to help identify catalyzing moments where archivists can choose between hubris or humility in their working approaches to codified archival practices. The article proposes that disruption to archival language is necessary to support both progressive shifts in archival practice and theoretical moves to deterritorialize normative-destructive archives.

 

RÉSUMÉ
Dans le roman de Beckett, le héros éponyme Molloy souffre à la fois de l’inaptitude de se rappeler et de l’incapacité d’oublier, offrant une clé pour comprendre les archives et tous ses malaises. Pour penser cette insatisfaction archivistique, cet article introduit deux nouvelles expressions dans le discours des archives : le « susaprès » (« aforeafter »), pour décrire la condition de temporalité archivistique et le temps archivistique (ce qui est terminé et qui se poursuit), et la « fragilité archivistique » (« archival fragility »), pour nommer le malaise des archivistes qui sont confrontés aux dommages immédiats de leur pratique professionnelle. Pour contribuer aux discussions portant sur la constante réévaluation des pouvoirs et des fonctions archivistiques, et à cette réévaluation même, j’offre le « susaprès » comme instrument pour resituer les archives dans leur forme socioculturelle, et la « fragilité archivistique » comme moyen pour aider à identifier les moments catalyseurs où les archivistes peuvent choisir entre l’hubris et l’humilité par leurs approches aux pratiques archivistiques codifiées dans leur travail. Cet article propose que la perturbation du langage archivistique est nécessaire pour appuyer à la fois les changements progressifs dans la pratique archivistique et les mouvements théoriques vers la déterritorialisation des archives normatives-destructives.

Author Biography

Antonina Lewis

Antonina Lewis lives in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative arts and a doctorate in cultural theory and has over ten years of experience as a practicing archivist (including roles at the Public Record Office Victoria, the National Archives of Australia, and as University Archivist at Victoria University in Melbourne). Most recently, she was employed as a research fellow on the Imagined Archives of Out of Home Care project in the Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics (COSI) at Monash University, working on a participatory research program that considers intersections between creative practice and living archives and co-creating public exhibitions with care-experienced collaborators. Prior to joining the research team at COSI, Antonina was program manager for the Find & Connect web resource, a data portal and archival outreach site that aims to better the standard of information justice available to survivors of the Forgotten Australians generations, the estimated 500,000 children who were placed into institutional “care” in Australia during the 20th century. If you’d like to say hello, she tweets sporadically as @aylewis.

Archivaria 86 cover
Published
2018-11-26
How to Cite
Lewis, Antonina. 2018. “Omelettes in the Stack: Archival Fragility and the Aforeafter”. Archivaria 86 (November), 44-67. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13643.
Issue
Archivaria 86 (Fall 2018)
Section
Articles

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